Euro: Price Convergence

Baroness Wilcox: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What has been the impact of the introduction of the euro on price convergence in the euro-zone.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Government said that they will complete an assessment of the five economic tests within two years of the start of this Parliament. The preliminary analysis supporting the five tests assessment—that is, technical work needed to enable the assessment to be completed within two years—is well under way. The 6th September paper for the Treasury Select Committee on the Treasury's approach to the preliminary and technical work made clear that that work, which will be published alongside the assessment of the five tests, will include a supporting study on price differentials. Further details can be found in the 6th September paper, a copy of which is in the Library of the House.

Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, I thank the Minister for answering my Question. Can he give the House some concrete examples of where prices have already come together?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, a very detailed report was produced and published in July this year. It describes the whole process of adoption of the euro. It is called EPR6—6th Report on Euro Preparation. I recommend it to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox. As to the effect on prices, I believe that the best evidence comes not from the Government but from Eurostat, which, in its most recent report on 18th November, estimated that the effect of the changeover on inflation was between 0.0 and 0.2 per cent.

Lord Taverne: My Lords, the evidence relating to the impact of the euro seems to be somewhat ambivalent. Small prices—that is, for items such as cups of coffee—have risen since the introduction of the euro but big prices—for major goods such as cars and so on—are likely to go down. Is it not important that we are part of a system in which price transparency has led to a great deal more competition, and are the Government not keen to promote competition?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, my Lords. The argument for the euro has always been one of transparency of prices leading to keener competition. The euro having been in place for only 11 months, I believe it is a little early to be as definite as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, appears to be about the detail. However, certainly the aggregate effect has not been one of inflation, as reported in a number of Euro-sceptic British newspapers. I am as confident as the noble Lord that, in due course, there will be better evidence of the beneficial effects of transparency.

Lord Saatchi: My Lords, was not one of the benefits of the euro said to be that the greater transparency offered would lead to more common standard prices across Europe? The reason I ask is that if, around the euro-zone, one took a taxi to the airport where one bought a book and had a cup of coffee, the taxi fare per kilometre would cost 3 euros in Brussels and 1 euro in Stockholm; a top-10 paperback would cost 7 euros in Madrid and 23 euros in Paris; and the Nescafe would set one back 8 euros in Frankfurt and 4 euros in Rome.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, as always, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, on the detail and quality of his research, and I should be grateful if that could be passed on to his researcher. Of course, price standardisation does not occur immediately and will not occur to the extent that prices affected by, for example, different levels of VAT will come together. In general, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, is right. Transparency will in due course—not immediately and certainly not within 11 months—lead to a better deal for the consumer.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his original, very detailed Answer to the Question. I thought that it covered the points very well. Perhaps I may also be allowed to congratulate the researcher of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi. I do not know what on earth he was doing with that research, but perhaps my noble friend can help us. Whether it showed inflation in the euro-zone to be higher or lower, the Euro-sceptics would still attack it. That applies to the view of the research expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi. Does my noble friend accept—from what he says, I believe that he does—that, since its inception, the euro-zone has gone very well indeed?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is what the 6th Report on Euro Preparation, which we published on 17th July, says. It states that, despite all the predictions of doom and gloom before and immediately after the introduction of the euro, the changeover went extremely well. A period of two months was allowed for the changeover. However, from my experience, and as reported in EPR6, the changeover took place within two or three days. It is possible to make such changes without great disruption.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the noble Lord's Answer to my noble friend who asked the Question concerned inflation. Is he saying to the House that, thus far, there is no sign of price convergence?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, my Lords. I am saying that the element of inflation which has taken place and which, according to Eurostat—the European statistical office in Luxembourg—can reasonably and legitimately be attributed to the changeover to the euro is minimal. It is in the range 0.0 to 0.2 per cent. There are two different issues. One is convergence of prices across European countries and the other is the general level of prices. I believe that it is fair to distinguish between the two, although both are clearly important.

Lord Richard: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I read the same table as, I believe, did the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, in either the Telegraph or the Daily Mail showing comparative costs of taxi rides? Is my noble friend further aware that the most expensive taxi ride in the European Union is in this country, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is outside the euro-zone?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it is worse after midnight.

Drug Treatment Centres

Baroness Masham of Ilton: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	How many residential drug treatment centres there are in England for people aged under 17.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, there are currently two residential drug treatment centres in England exclusively providing services to people aged under 17. They provide intensive and specialised services for young people with complex needs, but the majority of young people who need drug treatment are supported by a range of other appropriate services.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware that more and more people aged 15 and 16 are entering young offender institutions? It is much more difficult for them when they come out and are sucked back into the drug culture. Will she closely consider the matter and try to get some of the new money promised for young people? I am sure that everyone who has had teenage children will know that that is a difficult age group.

Baroness Andrews: Absolutely, my Lords. The Question is extremely timely. Young people leaving young offender institutions when they are over 18 have access to adult residential services—there are about 300 bed spaces. But if they are in juvenile accommodation because they are younger than that, it is felt that when they come out, unless they have exceptional needs, they are better supported in the community, where their parents can be supportive and they can receive intensive treatment.
	The drugs update Statement made yesterday made it clear that young people are at the heart of our strategy and that the additional money to be made available during the next three years will go towards new services and treatment. The noble Baroness will want to know that some of that money will be spent on better after-care services.

Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, although I appreciate the points made by the Minister, will she tell us directly whether the number of drug rehabilitation centres is sufficient?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, as I have said, it depends on the situation of young people—their needs, their family situation and whether they are vulnerable with complex needs. In some cases, especially those involving long-term drug addicts, residential accommodation is clearly appropriate. The question of whether provision is sufficient is always extremely difficult to answer. We do not have sufficient drug treatments. Part of the emphasis of the updated strategy published yesterday is to ensure that during the next three years double the current number of people enter treatment. Among the new provision will be residential accommodation.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, given that treatment in the community is so much cheaper because education is already provided, and in view of the increasing number and falling age of young people taking drugs—a report published this week states that 10 per cent of 11 year-olds are taking drugs—what additional resources do the Government intend to devote to alcohol education in schools and, in particular, to support and help for parents of children at risk, to help them to help those young people?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, to deal first with parents, as a result of yesterday's Statement, we have a new communications strategy that will have at its focus informing and supporting parents and helping them to enable their children. That will be a three-year strategy. In addition, the Department for Education and Skills is consolidating educational guidance, so that it all sends the same message. I am sure that the noble Baroness knows that the alcohol strategy is at present the subject of consultation. When that is completed, by the middle of next year, we will know better how to use resources. Many children who abuse drugs are also alcohol abusers.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: My Lords, I must declare an interest as chair of the National Treatment Agency for substance misuse. My organisation and I appreciate the Government's concern for young people, but does my noble friend agree that many different drugs are involved, that each case must be treated individually and that residential care is not the only solution for treating drug use? Does she further agree that local co-ordination of treatment is key? How is that occurring and being improved?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of the National Treatment Agency, which has been in existence for only 18 months but is making a terrific impact, and to my noble friend's work as chair of the NTA. Part of its major task is to improve co-ordination on the ground. We must face the fact that until about two years ago there was virtually no such co-ordination. Drug action teams had extremely variable standards of provision and action. The NTA has been able to bring guidance to bear on the DATs, so that there is now a much more even and optimistic prospect. Co-ordination is an issue across the whole field. Locally, we need more integration of children's services. Nationally, we need departments to work together, as they now plan to do as a result of the drug strategy.
	My noble friend is right to say that residential care is not always the answer. Especially when focusing on vulnerable young children, many of whom have been in care, we need individual solutions.

Lord Taverne: My Lords, I welcome the general drift of government policy on the treatment of addicts. I also appreciate the difficulty of providing residential places for under-17s. Addicts under 17 are more expensive to treat than those over 17 because of the need to provide educational facilities.
	I agree with the Minister that residential treatment is not the only effective treatment, but there are occasions on which residential treatment is important. There is a great shortage of places. Does not the situation call for a special capital grant to deal with such special cases?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, one of the reasons for separating children and adults is that long-term, chronic addicts have different needs and different treatment modalities. We must make sure that we do not confuse treatment for children with the sort of things that we put in place for adults.
	There is an additional £40 million for treatment for next year. By the end of the third year, there will be £98 million. It may well be that some of that money will be spent on capital building and residential treatment.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, does the Minister agree that young offender institutions are residential institutions? Therefore, many young people are in residential care. The local authorities do not want to pick up the bill; they pass it on to the Home Office.

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, we must bear in mind that the pooled budget that covers drug treatment, is, of course, ring-fenced and should be used only for that purpose. I would like to see an extension of inreach and outreach work in young offender institutions, so that those young people connect with the community when they come out. They must have appropriate treatment to bring them off drugs when they are in prison.

Earl Howe: My Lords, is the Minister aware that certain drug users are, in general, under-represented in drug treatment centres—for example, crack cocaine users, women and addicts from ethnic minorities? That point came out in yesterday's White Paper. What kind of strategies do the Government have in mind for targeting support on the groups that most need it?

Baroness Andrews: My Lords, clearly, crack is a problem. It is the one element of drug use that is increasing among young people. More young people are using it. In January, there was the first of a series of meetings on the development of a new strategy for crack and cocaine. That will be followed by new guidance. We are having a close look at what can be done urgently.
	We have a problem with training professionals to work with black and ethnic minority users, who have specific needs. I am pleased to say that one of the things that the National Treatment Agency has done in the past few months is put forward a programme for training black and ethnic minority drugs workers. That will come into effect in April, and 50 people have already been recruited.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, we are well into the seventeenth minute.

Turkey

Lord Avebury: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What was the outcome of their discussions with Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, on 20th November, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Mr Erdogan discussed AKP's plans for government and commitment to reform, particularly in the area of human rights. The Prime Minister underlined the United Kingdom's strong support for Turkey's EU candidature. He stressed that there was now a unique opportunity, ahead of the Copenhagen summit, to make progress over European defence issues and to resolve the problem of Cyprus on the basis of the United Nations Secretary-General's recent comprehensive proposals.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, considering that the European Commission has just found that Turkey does not fully meet the political criteria for membership and that many of the reforms have significant limitations, does not the noble Baroness agree that it would be inappropriate for the Copenhagen summit to set a date for the start of accession negotiations? Will the Government do their best at the Copenhagen summit and elsewhere to press Turkey to have a proper internationally approved plan for the return of several hundred thousand villagers who were displaced from their homes in the south-east? They are still waiting to return, despite the fact that the European Court has ruled in their favour, and no compensation has yet been paid to them by the Turkish Government.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the Turkish Government are moving towards the Copenhagen criteria, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will be pleased to know that yesterday the Turkish Cabinet passed a further package of reforms, which has been sent to the Turkish Parliament. The reforms are designed to address the shortcomings highlighted in the Commission's report, to which the noble Lord referred. They deal with issues such as human rights, torture and ill treatment, incommunicado detention and rights of access to lawyers and many others.
	The reforms will, we hope, be passed before the Copenhagen summit, which is next week. I understood from a conversation that I had with Her Majesty's Ambassador in Ankara only this morning that a further reform package was expected to be on the way.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, in contrast to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the view of the ex-president of France, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, should we not strongly welcome the fact that Turkey has, for the first time in many years, a strong majority government? Should we not recognise that, far from being a burden on the European Union, Turkey can, in the longer term and at the appropriate time, be a major security and economic bulwark for the European Union? Should not Her Majesty's Government take every possible step to encourage the offering of a firm date, in due course, to Turkey at the Copenhagen summit?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will be delighted—and not too embarrassed—to know that his views are entirely consonant with those of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister said:
	"I hope that it will be possible to make a commitment to that country"—
	Turkey—
	"at the European Council in Copenhagen. I hope that we will set a firm date for negotiations, that they will form part of a package to lay to rest some of the outstanding difficulties on European defence and that we shall at least find a proper way forward on Cyprus".—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/02; col. 44.]
	The noble Lord is giving me the thumbs-up, so I reckon that he is very much in agreement with my right honourable friend.

Lord Elton: My Lords, as one whose thumbs are firmly horizontal at the moment, I ask the Minister whether what is going on in Turkish-occupied Cyprus is a matter of relevance and concern. What views are the Government expressing to the Turkish Government on how that should improve before their admission to the Community?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as my right honourable friend made clear in the statement that I just read, we hope that the issue of Cyprus will be resolved. The new Turkish Government have signalled clearly that they want to solve the Cyprus problem as soon as possible. For our part, we are urging them to do all that they can before the European Council meeting next week, for the sake of all those in Cyprus.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, will the noble Baroness answer the second question that I put to her? Will the Government press the Turkish authorities to allow the displaced villagers of the south-east—who number between 380,000 and a million, according to Human Rights Watch—to return to their original villages and pay them compensation for the disturbance that they have suffered?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I cannot tell the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, whether that issue is addressed in what I understand to be 36 key legislative changes going before the Turkish Parliament or whether it will be addressed in the smaller package of reforms that, I understand from our ambassador, will be brought forward shortly. I will certainly make the noble Lord's views clear to my right honourable friend in another place who deals with those issues.
	I hope that the noble Lord will acknowledge that what has happened in the past 24 hours or so in Turkey will be significant in making reforms in areas about which, I know, he has strong views.

Israel: Settlement Expansion

Lord Wright of Richmond: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What representations they have made to the Israeli Government about the continuing expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we have consistently called on the Israeli Government to freeze all settlement activity, including the "natural growth" of settlements, as recommended in the Mitchell report.
	On 5th November, my honourable friend Mike O'Brien raised settlement activity with the Israeli ambassador. On 18th November, our ambassador in Tel Aviv conveyed to Prime Minister Sharon's office the Foreign Secretary's concern at reports that the Israeli Government were considering extending settlements in Hebron, which we consider to be illegal and an obstacle to peace. Those points were reiterated at official level to the Israeli Ambassador on 20th November.

Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I particularly thank her for her report of the expressions of concern that have been conveyed to the Israeli Government. Is she aware that subsequent to those expressions of concern the press have reported that 15 Palestinian families have been told that their property is to be demolished to make way for settlers' access to certain shrines; that the settlers in Hebron have announced that they propose to erect a building of 1,000 flats in Hebron; and that the so-called separation fence has already absorbed a great deal of property on the east of the 1967 line, extending to as much as five kilometres in some places?
	In those circumstances, does the Minister agree that a viable Palestinian state—to which the European Union, President Bush and, indeed, Prime Minister Sharon are explicitly committed—is becoming, day by day, less and less practicable or viable? Cannot the Prime Minister persuade President Bush to use his undoubted influence to compel the Israeli Government to halt and to reverse this illegal and disastrous settlement process? I would argue that it is not in the interests of Israel itself and it is certainly undermining any progress in the peace process.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that at a time when there is a firm international consensus on a two-state solution—comprising as it does the Arab League, the United States and the European Union—it is alarming that the practical basis for this solution is in jeopardy. The fence is indeed worrying because it involves the destruction of Palestinian farmland. We have protested about the fence through our ambassador in Tel Aviv. As I indicated, we have made representations on the settlement activity. We have talked, and we continue to talk, to the United States about these concerns. We hope that Israel will see that settlement building threatens its own vital interests in a two-state solution.

Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there is no benefit whatever in inferring that all the blame lies on one side in a situation which is very parlous? Does she further agree that the right answer is to ensure that constructive talks take place between the parties rather than an escalation of violence? Does she also agree that the proposed talks between my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and the new mayor of Haifa are to be thoroughly welcomed?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree that the only way in which this appalling situation will be solved is through discussions. That is why we have been keen advocates of the discussions being undertaken by the quartet, which we hope will agree a road map for progress towards a comprehensive settlement by 2005. Of course it is axiomatic that the blame lies on both sides of this terrible conflict. There was an appalling massacre in Hebron which exacerbated the situation over settlements. The Israeli Government took a decision over those settlements in retaliation for what happened in Hebron, and since then we have seen a further appalling massacre. The only way forward for the terrible position in Palestine and Israel is on the basis of discussions. We hope that the discussions undertaken by the quartet will be successful.

The Lord Bishop of Guildford: My Lords, is the Minister aware that visits made from this country on behalf of the Churches to communities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip persistently and unanimously report a growing sense of despair and isolation among the Palestinian people—and among younger people a very dangerous growth in anger—about the present situation? There is a feeling that the isolation means that they have few friends in the international community and that the international community is powerless to act. Can the Minister give some assurance that Her Majesty's Government will exercise all of their influence on our American friends to act with greater equity in these matters?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, one cannot fail to be aware of the growing despair among many Palestinians. Currently, 1.5 million are in receipt of food aid; 50 per cent are unemployed; two-thirds are at the poverty level; 600,000 are directly affected by curfews; and 600,000 children do not go to school regularly. These are appalling statistics for the Palestinian people. We shall do everything that we can in the discussions being undertaken by the quartet, as I did when I met the Alexandria Committee on 23rd/24th October under the auspices of the then Archbishop of Canterbury. I hope that we shall see a way forward through the United States, the EU, the UN and Russia agreeing a comprehensive settlement plan for 2005.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, does the Minister agree—

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, using the—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, we will have time to hear from both the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, so I suggest that we hear them in that order.

Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, using the identical terms of the Question on the Order Paper, what representations are Her Majesty's Government making to the Palestinian Authority in regard to the harbouring of suicide bombers and other terrorists on its own territory?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we have made many representations to the Palestinians and to Mr Arafat that they should not only place people under arrest when they know that they have been responsible for these atrocities but should also keep them under lock and key. As I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, knows, we have helped in that respect by taking into custody, and helping to look after, some of those we believe to have been responsible for these atrocities. We are even-handed on that matter.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the problems is that in the areas around the settlements which become secure areas occupied by the military, there is very great interference with economic activity within the territory of Palestine? In particular, many roads are closed, which makes employment, shopping and other transactions extremely difficult and sometimes involves civilian deaths. Does she accept that many of us recognise the extraordinary vitality of Israeli democracy? The new leader of the Labour Party, Mr Mitzna, is backing a withdrawal of the settlements in Gaza and is calling for a new security zone in which he believes can be based a new international settlement, allowing Israel to be secure and the Palestinian territory to emerge. Many of us who criticise the present Government of Israel would like it to be widely known, in this House and outside, that in no way does that suggest that we do other than admire many of the achievements of Israel and the Jewish people.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Baroness has summed up the position rather well. The problem is very difficult because the settlements are growing. There have been 69 new outposts established between 1996 and now, and we have seen 34 new settlements in the past 12 months That fuels Palestinian anger and tends to confirm their fears that Israel is not genuinely interested in ending the occupation. We admire a great deal of what the Israeli nation has done. It is battling against terrible odds. I cannot imagine what it would be like to put a child on a school bus in the morning and for that child to be killed during the course of the day. It is an unimaginable horror that many Israeli citizens have to face. The tragedy is that these horrors are visited on civilians of both sides. Until both sides can accept that there is no way forward through violence but only through discussion, there will not be real progress.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, while totally agreeing—

Lord Bramall: My Lords, does the Minister—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches. We are also into the 33rd minute, so I suggest that we are brief.

Lord Bramall: My Lords, very briefly, does the Minister agree that the only way to stop these appalling suicide bombers is for the Israeli Government to say that if the bombers do stop, they will start to dismantle the illegal settlements in Palestine? That will give the Palestinians some hope instead of absolutely none.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, while the Israeli Government continue with these illegal settlements, Her Majesty's Government's view that they are a barrier to peace will remain true.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said what I was going to say. It is absolutely correct that, although the suicide bombers are atrocious, for the Israeli's to extend their settlements now must be both self-defeating and idiotic. Can we not, with the Americans, express a much stronger view that Israel should call a halt to the expansion of settlements?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will be pleased to know that we hope that the road map for progress will be published at the quartet principles meeting on 20th December. I hope that at that point we shall have a clearer view as to the way forward.

UK Entrants: Medical Tests

Lord Ackner: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What medical tests, if any, are mandatory in relation to those seeking asylum or seeking to immigrate to the United Kingdom; and, if none, why this is so.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, under the Immigration Act 1971, immigration officers are able to refer persons seeking leave to enter the United Kingdom to medical inspectors at ports of entry. The Immigration Rules state that immigration officers should refer anyone who mentions health or medical treatment as a reason for coming to the United Kingdom or who appears not to be in good physical or mental health. In addition, those seeking leave to enter the United Kingdom for a period of more than six months should normally be referred. This action during the immigration process is complemented by work done by the National Health Service at local level. It is our intention that asylum applicants who go into an induction centre on arrival will undergo a basic health screening.

Lord Ackner: My Lords, I express the appropriate gratitude for that rather un-illuminating reply. Is it not vital that one should have the earliest possible diagnosis of anyone entering this country who is HIV positive? The Minister is no doubt aware that I asked a Question about the near epidemic that is now occurring as a result of the increase in the number of immigrants who are HIV positive. Why is not medical examination made mandatory?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, this is a delicate and sensitive matter. That much is plain. The Government understand the importance of the issue raised by the noble and learned Lord. Medical tests have not been mandatory in the past. Understanding the concerns, the Government take the matter very seriously. The Department of Health, the Foreign Office and the Home Office are presently examining the situation because of its sensitivity and its importance. We take great care in these matters. Important questions are asked at ports of entry. We need to be aware that some two-thirds of those who seek asylum in the United Kingdom do so in-country rather than at the point of entry.

Lord Rotherwick: My Lords, how many people entering this country last year as asylum seekers were HIV positive or had AIDS? What will be the cost to the National Health Service for those people each year?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I am not in a position to provide the noble Lord with data and information in that form, partly for the reasons that I have explained. But it is right that people who are here, whether or not they are asylum seekers, should receive treatment. The actions taken by staff at ports of entry when it is revealed that someone has an illness of that nature are to ensure that the person is given a full medical inspection and that he or she is appropriately referred on to receive treatment.

Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I appreciate the human rights problems to which this question gives rise, but is it not the case that not only do many immigrants to this country carry the HIV/AIDS infection but that there has been a worrying increase in the number of individuals carrying drug resistant tuberculosis? Many other countries impose strict medical conditions on entry. Fifty years ago, when I went as a young researcher to the United States, I had to take with me an X-ray to show that I was not suffering from tuberculosis. Why do we not have mandatory health checks on all potential immigrants?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, as I made plain at the outset, we take this matter very seriously and are continuing to review the situation. The noble Lord has drawn attention to the fact that there are practices abroad that are different from our own. But it is worth saying that those countries that have different practices are those that have had long periods of inward migration such as the United States, Canada and Australia. This is an important area for debate. It needs to be kept continually under review. I should not want to leave noble Lords with the impression that initial checks are not undertaken at ports of entry—where appropriate, they are.

The Lord Bishop of Durham: My Lords, will the Minister give a categoric assurance that for asylum seekers with chronic illnesses who are already in this country medical facilities are as freely available as they are for a United Kingdom citizen?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate makes an important point. Of course we ensure that that is the case. People must have equal access to treatment—not only for their own benefit but for the wider benefit of society. If that were not to be the case, we should not be providing proper protective and anticipative healthcare.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords—

Lord Greaves: My Lords—

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the Liberal Democrats have not yet asked a question.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will be aware of a report published recently by the BMA entitled Asylum Seekers: Meeting their Healthcare Needs, which covers a wide range of issues, including those at ports of entry. Do the Government intend to respond to this important and interesting report; and, if so, when and how?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, we keep matters carefully under review and are well aware of the report. We need to take it on board in considering the health needs and concerns of immigrant populations and asylum seekers. I cannot give a date as regards a response, but, if the noble Lord wishes, I shall happily write to him on the matter.

Business

Lord Grocott: My Lords, I should like to make a brief statement about business on the last day on which the House is sitting before the Christmas Recess; namely, Thursday, 19th December. The usual channels have agreed that the House should sit at 11 a.m. on that day, with Starred Questions as first business and with no lunch break.
	As your Lordships will be aware, this is the normal pattern of a Sitting on the last day before a Recess and has been indicated in the Forthcoming Business since last Thursday. I should advise the House that the new Standing Order 41(1), which provides for the new-style Thursday Sittings, allows us this flexibility.

Business of the House: Debates this Day

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Dholakia set down for today shall be limited to two-and-a-half hours and that in the name of the Lord Roper to one-and-a-half hours.—(Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Business of the House: Standing Order 41

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the second Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That Standing Order 41 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with tomorrow to allow the Motion standing in the name of the Baroness Noakes to be taken after the Motion of the Earl of Onslow.—(Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Crime Prevention

Lord Dholakia: rose to call attention to the role of local communities and of penal institutions in preventing crime and in rehabilitating offenders; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, the links between social exclusion and crime are crystal clear. We only have to look at the characteristics of people in prisons. These are grim statistics. Over half the young people in custody have been excluded from school, two-thirds were unemployed before imprisonment and 40 per cent have been in care. Sixty per cent of prisoners have literacy and numeracy skills at or below the lowest basic skill level. Over 40 per cent have drug problems and the proportion of psychiatric problems ranges between 40 and 75 per cent. These trends may vary from time to time but overall the pattern remains fairly constant.
	Today's prison numbers stand at record levels: 72,522 incarcerated as of last week. The number of sentenced young prisoners between 15 and 17 stands at 2,090, and the number of young offenders between 16 and 20 at 6,770. There are 3,718 women in prison compared with an average of 1,560 in 1993. These include 623 young female offenders and 3,330 sentenced women. We now have to accommodate inmates in police cells, a practice that we discontinued some years ago. We must now seriously rethink the public protection role of our custodial institutions.
	Almost all who are in prison will one day come out. It is here that we have to accept that incarceration and resettlement are the two faces of the same coin. We must address what happens when prisoners are in prison, and, more fundamentally, how to resettle them when they are released so that they do not reoffend.
	The simplistic statements "prisons work" and "tough on crime" are attractive slogans but they seldom make good policies. Crime affects everyone. We have either been victims ourselves or have known someone who has. Reducing crime improves quality of life. We all have a part to play. It is in that regard that the role of the community in crime prevention is vital. We cannot rely solely on the criminal justice process to solve society's ills. Less than 50 per cent of crimes are reported to the police and only a small proportion result in a caution or conviction. The community must involve itself in building opportunities for people to lead law-abiding lives as well as reducing opportunities for crime to be committed.
	Of course, prevention is the best answer to crime. The direct and indirect costs of the criminal justice system are large. We spend over £10 billion on the criminal process but less than £500 million on crime prevention. The key to crime prevention is to deal with youth crime. Most crimes are committed by the young. We can do a lot about that. If we create the right environment for young people to grow up in, and if we respond in the right way if they get into trouble, most of them could be diverted from a criminal career. Locking up young people is not a solution; it brands them as criminals for the rest of their lives and reduces even further their prospects of doing something useful with their lives.
	I have been a member of a board of visitors and have visited many young offenders' institutions. The experience of prison is traumatic for vulnerable people. It often leads to self-mutilation and suicide.
	A wide variety of penalties that meet the public's requirements for punishment is available to the courts. Victims of crime, in particular, often vent their anger and frustration that the criminal justice system has failed them. There is now a recognition that the high cost of running our prisons, the number now in our penal institutions and the difficulties of meeting prison objectives are counter-productive because, although they may bring the short-term relief of safety, over a long period they do not help.
	Community penalties are an effective alternative and are to be commended. They require offenders to face up to what they have done, change their behaviour and try to make good the damage they have done to their victims and communities. More importantly, community penalties enable offenders to serve a punishment without also losing their jobs, families and community roots. Offenders who lose those things through being sent to prisons are less likely to lead law-abiding lives on release.
	I do not want to give the impression that we are out to abolish prisons. The annual budget for the Prison Service and the probation service is around £2.3 billion. It is estimated that the average cost of keeping a person in prison in the year 2001–02 was £37,000. It is important that we never lose sight of the fact that imprisonment is not only the most serious penalty available to courts but also the most expensive. It should be imposed only if the offence is so serious that only a prison sentence can be justified, or where there is a need to protect the public from serious harm.
	The Lord Chief Justice drew attention to the issue when he overturned an eight-month prison sentence imposed on a single mother convicted of deception who had no previous convictions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, expressed the view that judges and magistrates should take into account the female prison population before sentencing women offenders. He urged that custody should not be used for first-time offenders convicted of dishonesty, especially if they had children.
	Let me quote from a report by the Social Exclusion Unit on reducing offending by ex-prisoners:
	"Prison sentences are not succeeding in turning the majority of offenders away from crime. Of those prisoners released in 1997, 58% were convicted of another crime within two years. 36% were back inside on another prison sentence. The system struggles particularly to reform younger offenders. 18-20 year old male prisoners were reconvicted at a rate of 72% over the same period, 47% received another prison sentence".
	An ex-prisoner's path back from prison is extremely costly. A re-offending ex-prisoner is likely to be responsible for crime costing the criminal justice system an average of £65,000.
	We send people to prisons as punishment, not for punishment. When people are deprived of their liberty and freedom of choice by being sent to prison, nothing is gained by imposing additional punishment by holding them in deplorable conditions. During my membership of a board of visitors, I was often struck by the decaying state of our prisons, which hold people in cells for more than 20 hours a day with nothing to do. When will we realise that such conditions cause despair? They take away the only dignity that prisoners have left.
	In Martin Narey we have one of the most progressive and reforming Directors-General of the Prison Service. In Ann Overs and Rod Morgan, we have an effective Chief Inspector of Prisons and Chief Inspector of Probation. They have a difficult task, and we should all support them. But we must never lose sight of the fact that prison and our parole system can best serve our society by releasing people who are more likely to lead law-abiding lives and can deal with the practical problems that they will face on release. For this to happen, prisons must set an example to offenders by dispensing justice fairly and with humanity. They must allow prisoners to maintain ties with their families and communities. They must also provide for purposeful regimes so that prisoners can use their time constructively and prepare properly for release.
	Public confidence is shaped by the quality of service that the criminal justice system provides. That is the only way in which it can retain the confidence of all sections of the community. But the Government cannot work alone; they need the co-operation of the community. There is a wide range of voluntary organisations, large and small, throughout the country whose contribution to the reduction of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders is both crucial and collectively enormous. In the time available to me, I can list only a few examples but I know that other noble Lords will refer to other examples in their speeches. Instead, I shall concentrate on some key issues relating to partnerships between central and local government and the voluntary sector.
	Let us look first at the role of the voluntary and community sector in the types of community regeneration that are so crucial to reducing crime. The voluntary and community sector has become vital in the delivery of regeneration programmes in such key areas as education, health, community safety, crime reduction, employment and training. Voluntary organisations and community groups have been invited to participate in such developments as Best Value, local strategic partnerships, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal and the New Deal for Communities.
	There has been a growing recognition that voluntary and community organisations can be best placed to deliver front-line services to socially excluded communities in a manner that reflects and strengthens the social fabric and cultural diversity of that community. All the research into regeneration programmes shows that a community-led approach is the only effective way of turning crime-ridden, disadvantaged and demoralised communities into thriving, low-crime areas. As a result, voluntary and community organisations are being encouraged to become increasingly involved in service delivery. The report of the recent Treasury review into the role of the voluntary and community sector in service delivery recognises that the capacity of voluntary organisations needs to be increased if they are to do this effectively—that means more Government funding. The report of the review said:
	"The Government needs a voluntary and community sector that is strong, independent and has the capacity where it wishes to be a partner in delivering world-class public services. To help achieve this,"
	I note the following statement:
	"the Government will increase funding to build capacity in the sector and increase community participation".
	The report announced the new futurebuilders investment fund of £125 million over the next three years to help build capacity in the voluntary and community sector. This is a very welcome development. However, that will be for one-off expenditure only, and voluntary organisations also need continuing funding arrangements to enable them to provide high-quality services. Of particular importance, therefore, is the recommendation in the report that contracts for services with voluntary organisations must recognise the need for an element of payment towards those organisations' core management costs. If that is not done, voluntary organisations will be effectively subsidising the Government department for which they provide a service, as the real costs are never fully funded.
	Examples across the country demonstrate how communities can help. I commend the work of Crime Concern and Norwich Union partnerships in neighbourhood safety apprenticeship schemes in three communities in England. It is estimated that 40 per cent of all recorded crimes take place in only 10 per cent of neighbourhoods in England and Wales. These neighbourhoods are often marked by high rates of repeat victimisation, harassment, disorder, antisocial behaviour and drug dealing. Their crime and disorder problems are usually closely linked with a range of other social and environmental issues. Recognising this, Crime Concern brought together experts from crime prevention, policing, housing and other fields to look at what works in creating safer neighbourhoods. The key themes are important factors in reducing crime.
	There are other examples. My noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby, in responding to Her Majesty's Gracious Speech, drew our attention to a project in Islington. I should perhaps add that I take no credit for the fact that Islington council is now controlled by the Liberal Democrats. Tough measures to tackle antisocial behaviour pioneered on Islington's council estates are proving so successful that they are being used in 173 different parts of the country. Interest in setting up acceptable behaviour contracts (ABCs) has come from police as far away as South Africa and Germany.
	I should like at this stage to declare my interest in NACRO. I chair that organisation, which is involved in a wide range of activities relating to the prevention of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders. We work to reduce crime in three ways. We do so, first, by preventing crime—not by locks, bolts and bars, but by working for the social inclusion of disadvantaged and marginalised people who would otherwise be at risk of offending. We do so, secondly, by working for a just, effective and non-discriminatory criminal justice system. We do so thirdly by giving ex-offenders the resettlement support that they need to lead crime-free lives in the future.
	Over the past year, our achievements in all these areas have been striking. We have trained more than 13,000 people in our education and employment centres, housed more than 3,000 people in our housing projects, given 8,000 people resettlement advice through our Resettlement Plus Helpline, involved 7,500 young people in our youth activity projects, and our prison-based workers have provided resettlement help to more than 6,000 prisoners. Our consultancy work in the fields of crime reduction, mental health, youth crime, race equality and prisoner resettlement has increasingly been in demand.
	The Prison Service has also developed a range of recommendations which if implemented should address many of these issues. However, it is notable that the strategy relates only to prisons, meaning that the voluntary sector will continue to have to deal with prison and probation separately. It is in this matter that we have to establish partnerships with other agencies. One important development is the establishment by the probation service of a National Partnership Centrally Led Action Network which is working to develop a code of practice for effective partnership working between the National Probation Service and voluntary organisations.
	The reality today is that we are shamed by policies which have incarcerated more than 70,000 people in our prisons. An upward trend cannot he halted by the Government alone; we need the participation of all communities. Our civilised values depend on how we tackle our overcrowded prisons. Prisons have too often in the past played a central role. They need the community to assist them. We cannot afford to fail.
	My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for inaugurating this apt and timely debate—on a day, as it happens, which marks the publication of a series of essays on criminal justice in honour of the former right reverend Prelate and former Bishop for prisons, Bob Hardy. A seminar in Church House is under way as we speak, presided over by the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
	I speak as the Bishop of a city which has one of the few prisons dedicated to work with life sentenced prisoners. HMP Kingston is an old Victorian prison in Portsmouth which was recently inspected by the Inspectorate, in February 2001. I am glad to say that the Inspectorate was able to report that the prison,
	"was a small, stable community with markedly good relationships between staff and prisoners".
	It is the only prison in the country that has a unit for the elderly. This, of course, is because many such prisoners are considered too dangerous to release. The report points out that,
	"there was a substantial proportion of high-risk violent offenders".
	The work of the chaplaincy was described as impressive and the chapel was seen as a sanctuary in which prisoners could find peace and quiet.
	Some prisoners will never be released. In the press coverage that followed Myra Hindley's death, our society considered the difficulty of someone ever atoning for their crimes. However, it is the nature of Christian belief that no one is put outside the power of the redemptive love of Christ. On that view, it is possible that some life sentenced prisoners will achieve sufficient rehabilitation to make their release possible.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, in his distinguished maiden speech in this House nearly two weeks ago, spoke of the fact that,
	"as a society, we have no mandate to give up hope on anyone; and that redemption and rehabilitation are concerns that merit the attention of all of us".—[Official Report, 21/11/02; col. 491.]
	I echo those words and repeat his call for a culture of firm and demanding compassion. That culture must demand nothing less than achieving the full potential of every one of us; but it also recognises the obstacles on the journey that many people face.
	The right reverend Prelate also spoke of the burdens faced by the hard-pressed and committed servants of the Prison Service who find themselves placed under perpetual pressure. In their report on the resettlement activities at Kingston prison, the Inspectorate referred to frustration and the sense of fighting a losing battle because of the amount of paperwork in monitoring targets—a matter that covers other aspects of life, as we all know well. However, the Cognitive Self-Change Programme was felt to be demanding and worth while. The Home Office is also conducting research through the University of Oxford Centre for Criminological Research on the work of the probation service in the resettlement of discretionary life sentenced prisoners. All that is to be commended. What is less reassuring is that the Public Accounts Committee in another place reported on 5th September 2002 that some prisons were not succeeding in their resettlement work. The issues of jobs and housing remain problematic.
	There is, of course, a great difference between the release of a prisoner who has served a short sentence for burglary and the release of a prisoner who has committed a violent crime. It is good that the Parole Board is able to bring its wisdom to bear on the release of those given life sentences, an issue that will become more serious after the Anderson judgment, which removes the Home Secretary's power to set the tariff for mandatory life prisoners. My concern today, however, is to illustrate the difficulties which life sentenced prisoners face on their release, if that happens. They return to a world which they left many years ago, even if the Prison Service prepares them for this with day-release visits. They return to families who may have been deeply affected by the person's crime, especially if that crime was against a member of the family. In that situation, there is a challenge to all of us who speak of repentance, of hope, and of resurrection, however difficult that may be, if it is to cut any ice in the somewhat frozen-over culture which we are addressing this afternoon.
	A former Member of these Benches, George Bell, wartime Bishop of Chichester, once remarked that,
	"without forgiveness there can be no regeneration".
	It is good that that rather theological term has achieved a much more social focus in recent years. I have never believed in the well-known saying, "forgive and forget". They are not the same thing, and both the victims, relatives and friends, and the perpetrators of murder, are scarred for life—literally for life—by what has happened. Institutional forgiveness for society and for any organisation within it, including the Church, is a very difficult process.
	I am told that it is more expensive to send people to prison than it is to send them to Eton. I would not like to try to get the Minister—who, like me, started off at the Edinburgh Academy—to remark that Eton, as Horace Rumpole remarked, is a "rural penal colony". However, it is none the less a statistic that is worth pondering.
	I should like to end by drawing attention to the importance of making the best possible use of prison, in the hope that rehabilitation in the community on release can become rather more of a reality than it is now.

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone: My Lords, this debate addresses one of the most pressing, important and difficult issues we have to face in Britain today. It is widely acknowledged that our prisons are in a state of real crisis as overcrowding has reached intolerable levels. The issues of law and order and crime and punishment are now the subject of regular headlines in both the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.
	The Lord Chief Justice recently said:
	"Everybody thinks our system is becoming soft and wimpish. In point of fact, it is one of the most punitive systems in the world".
	The director general of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, has talked, rightly, about our "love affair" with custody. Thus, while the number of offenders coming before the courts has remained almost constant in the past 10 years, the proportion sentenced to custody has almost doubled.
	There seems to be a fatalism abroad which accepts that this increase will continue. The present all-time high of the prison population of more than 72,500 is predicted to rise to more than 80,000 by 2005. It will take a massive effort of political will on the part of the Government, a major re-adjustment of sentencing policy and practices, and, above all, a serious rethinking of the delivery, administration and funding of community penalties to alter the trend.
	Overall, we have more sentencing options than any equivalent jurisdiction in western Europe. We have an enormous range of community penalties available to the courts. At present, 485 convicted offenders begin community sentences every day in England and Wales.
	Sentences served in the community are infinitely preferable to imprisonment for all but the most serious offenders. They do not further disrupt and damage the already disrupted and damaged lives of offenders through the loss of jobs, homes and relationships which makes reoffending so likely. They also make possible realistic reparation and restitution and all the elements of restorative justice that are the constructive and creative responses to crime. But it is clear that community penalties do not always command the greatest confidence of the sentencers or the public. They are seen by some as inadequately tough, particularly when the reoffending rate is currently roughly the same as for custody. That is one part of it. The relevance of what is delivered to both the offender and the offence is another. I have visited and seen some projects that come under the heading of community penalties where provision is clearly inadequate and irrelevant in all these respects. There is certainly room for improvement.
	I must declare an interest as chair of an initiative called Rethinking Crime and Punishment—a modest goal—which is funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, of which I am a trustee. Its aims are to raise the level of public debate on how we deal with offenders, to increase public understanding and involvement and to inject some fresh thinking into these fascinating and complex issues. Specifically, we are setting up an inquiry to look into community penalties, to see what works and why, and what does not work and why, to try to illuminate the gap that exists between rhetoric and reality, with the aim of making some really useful and practical recommendations.
	The role of the probation service is central to any change as it is the main agency delivering community penalties. Extension of its role will require a massive and speedy new commitment of funding and resources. The probation service is clearly committed to the Government's policy of a strengthened focus on the victims of crime and in the strict implementation and enforcement of the terms of community orders. The conditions attached to a community order and how they are implemented are the key to the effect that a community order will have on the offender and society. With two breaches of an order, such as, for example, being late for an appointment, the offender will be sent to prison.
	The reality of offenders' chaotic lives means that simple things like keeping appointments are extremely difficult. Enforcement of the breach of failing to keep two appointments and therefore sending someone to prison is a real possibility. Some inmates are now known as "two-strike prisoners". Worryingly, community penalties are becoming more interventionist and punitive. Even low level offending, which 10 years ago might have been dealt with by a fine or a conditional discharge, is being drawn up the tariff scale. Worse, current trends show that an increased proportion of offenders who are subject to court reports from the probation service are being recommended for custodial penalties, and the proportion being breached for non-compliance with community sentences is also increasing.
	We should do well to remember the shocking example of America where breach of community penalties is the single biggest reason for being in prison. Community penalties are not of themselves enough. The quality of what they offer and the way in which they are used are of equal and vital importance.
	Other community-based strategies have great potential for expansion. Tagging has been highly successful where used. It was intended significantly to reduce the prison population, but, in general, has been greatly under-used. The use of the fine has collapsed in the past 10 years. Many experts are now urgently arguing for the restoration of the day fine, and also of allowing fines to be commuted into unpaid work. Those are realistic, practical and effective sentences that could, at a stroke, have a real impact on prison numbers. They would have a restorative rather than a criminalising effect. Youth offender panels, which have been introduced to deal with first-time young offenders, provide an excellent model for involving the local community in resolving local crime problems.
	I greatly favour those strategies that involve major elements of reparation and restitution—of paying something back to victims and the community which has been offended against. Such strategies restore dignity and confidence. Penalties that divorce the offender from the offence and the victim—notably prison—cannot achieve that, thereby leaving only retribution as the outcome of punishment. The phrase "restorative justice" has occupied reams of written and verbal rhetoric, but where it exists it can truly restore. I have seen it in action in restorative conferencing in Wandsworth prison as part of the Justice Research Consortium's work, and real justice is done. The governor told me that having started as a deep sceptic, he is now a strong supporter of the process.
	Finally, I urge the Government to look seriously at the possibility of developing widespread partnerships with the voluntary sector. We heard much about that from my noble friend Lord Dholakia. There are many examples of excellent practice with highly successful outcomes in terms of greatly reduced re-offending, often at a fraction of the cost of custody. That should be drawn on and widely developed. I serve on the Scottish committee of Barnardo's where remarkable work is being done in several projects with young offenders. One example is Chosi in Dundee where the reoffending rates are down by a huge 80 per cent. I refer also to the preventive work of Matrix involving early intervention with younger children and families. There are wonderfully successful outcomes, and the long-term savings to society are beyond price. The potential for rolling out similar programmes for all ages is great and necessary.
	We must balance retribution with restitution and rehabilitation. Community penalties must be expanded and improved if we are to reduce re-offending and achieve a truly safer society.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I, too, welcome the opportunity of this debate provided by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. I know well the contribution that he has made to reform in this area, especially through his work with NACRO and the support that he has given to youth justice reform.
	He is right to emphasise the contribution of voluntary organisations and volunteers. I should at this stage declare an interest as chairman of both the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. My contribution today will be based on my time as chairman of that board for the past four years, overseeing the youth justice reforms that have produced greater community involvement with young offenders and changed the juvenile parts of young offender institutions for the better, through the board's commissioning role.
	It is worth reflecting briefly on what was happening in youth justice before these reforms. The youth justice system in the mid-1990s was struggling and was preoccupied with process rather than trying to achieve beneficial outcomes for young people and their communities. There were few effective community preventive programmes and little work with victims or parents. Frankly, until the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, anti-social behaviour on the part of young people was hardly on the agenda.
	What we have now is a clear statutory aim for those working in youth justice of not punishment but preventing offending by children and young people. That is the mission statement. There are 155 multi-agency youth offending teams—which include health and education not just the criminal justice agencies—well established across England and Wales working with local communities and local courts. The sentencing framework has been reformed with new community sentences. Individual assessment of young offenders is being systematically undertaken so that the programmes provided fit their needs and are not just the ones that happen to be available. There are many more intervention programmes—often using local volunteers or paid staff from local communities—that tackle the identified problems going wrong in these young people's lives. A new robust community alternative to custody—the Intensive Support and Surveillance Programme—has now been provided to 2,700 young people and is supported by local courts, local communities and local police.
	I should mention that many of the youngsters on ISSPs receive the support of a mentor or advocate drawn from the local community to help bring them back on to the straight and narrow. As a result, youth courts are receiving a better service and are now working well with youth offending teams without in any way prejudicing their independence of judgment.
	There is broad and growing support for this new system. Home Office research into the initial effect of the new community disposals from an analysis of juvenile offenders convicted in July 2000 showed a 14.6 per cent reduction against predicted reconviction rates for the group after one year. That was before the full roll-out of a year of the reforms. Ministers have recognised this as a significant achievement. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice in his Rose Lecture at the end of October endorsed the new approach saying that the changes to the youth justice system gave an illustration of the changes that could be promoted in the wider criminal justice system. It is worth quoting briefly from his lecture:
	"The Youth Justice Board has the principal aim of preventing (rather than punishing) offending. This does not mean that there is no need to punish. It means that it should be recognised that punishment is only part of what is to be achieved. The punishment should be constructed to make it clear that crime does not pay, but it must also be constructive and result in the offender, at the end of his punishment, being less likely rather than more likely to reoffend".
	That seems to me to be the message that needs to be worked on consistently as we approach this issue.
	I have given this brief picture of the youth justice reforms and the quotation from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice not for reasons of personal vanity or territorial aggrandisement but to show what can be achieved when there is a clear mission statement, when public agencies work together, and when there is more creativity in the responses to offending and local communities are much more engaged with the problem. The heroes of these changes are not the Youth Justice Board but the youth offending team managers and their staff who have been real social entrepreneurs; the approaching 10,000 local volunteers, sessional workers and voluntary organisations who are now providing far more responsible adult face-to-face contact with young offenders than in the past—we should never underestimate the impact of that face-to-face contact—and the local youth courts (again volunteers) who have been willing to believe that young people could change and to use the new community programmes far more extensively.
	I want to mention briefly a few particular changes that highlight this greater community involvement. About 25,000 young offenders a year receive a referral order. This means that they go before a youth offender panel composed of two trained local volunteers and a youth offending team worker. The panel agrees a contract for change with the young offender with an element of restorative justice and reparation. If this contract is completed, the effect can be that the conviction is treated as spent so there is an incentive to change. About 5,000 local community people are now members of these panels and in effect administer community justice.
	Although the Government can take great credit for the advances that have been made, there is still a lot more to be done to prevent offending by young people and to apply the lessons of these reforms to the adult population, particularly those aged 18 to 20 who have many similarities to juvenile offenders but are trapped in a less responsive system. Even with these improvements we still have far too many young people in custody, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice has recognised. The Youth Justice Board would like to see the Intensive Support and Surveillance Programme converted into a proper order of up to 12 months as a rigorous alternative to short custodial sentences, which are highly ineffective. I hope that progress can be made on this issue in this parliamentary Session. If I can help the Minister by moving an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill when it arrives from the other place, I shall be delighted to be of service to the Government in that matter.
	As the Government have recognised, the improvements for juveniles have brought into sharp relief the unsatisfactory state of regimes for 18 to 20 year-olds in young offender institutions and the paucity of robust community programmes like ISSP for young adults. We need major changes—a paradigm shift—in the way we deal with young adult offending, with far more of them being supervised by multi-agency teams (not just the National Probation Service) in the community on ISSP-type programmes rather than making it impossible for the Director General of the Prison Service to improve regimes due to overcrowding.
	Finally, I should like to say a few words about prevention. The Youth Justice Board and local agencies have made great strides with youth inclusion programmes and Summer Splash Schemes targeting high risk youngsters on high crime estates and with great involvement on the part of local organisations and volunteers. This summer, possibly as many as 100,000 youngsters took part in Summer Splash Schemes and the decrease in youth crime in these areas was significant. These programmes are low cost. It is crucial that we continue to invest in that kind of programme giving local people the opportunity to bring about change in their communities. Departments in Whitehall need to get their act together on this matter as regards organising funding streams more effectively and should try to achieve the co-ordination that the Prime Minister has brought to the street crime initiative. We are seeing strong progress being made with young offenders but we need to apply those lessons to the wider criminal justice system.

Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for initiating today's timely debate.
	I entered your Lordships' House in 1973, a very long time ago, but I waited until 1974 to make my maiden speech on prisoners' wives. Then, as now, my party was in opposition. That debate was initiated by Lord Longford and Lord Gardiner wound up.
	In the late 1960s and early 1970s I helped an organisation, the Prisoners' Wives Service, which was set up by a redoubtable lady, Lady Chancellor, and still exists today under a slightly different name. It is entirely manned by volunteers. I understand that about 70 people work voluntarily for it. Having talked to that organisation today, what is depressing is that so little has changed since that time. In those days wives or partners—in those days they were mostly wives—had one paid visit to a prison per month. Now it is two and those on state benefit can seek financial assistance for such visits. However, as stated in the House yesterday, many prisoners are now located far away from their homes and families. Apparently, there is also a lack of communication and an apparent unwillingness on the part of prisons to inform a prisoner's partner that the prisoner has been moved. That seems to me extremely distressing for all concerned.
	I am sure that noble Lords are aware that visitors have to telephone before they make a visit. In this day and age, when telephones are very busy, sometimes it is virtually impossible to get through. What happens then? A visit cannot be made. A woman in Italy had a son in prison here and had booked her flight. She never got through to the prison so she was unable to visit. That is appalling and worries me considerably.
	At Wandsworth it takes three months for a prisoner to receive a parcel. I do not know what happens to it in that time. It takes nine days for a first-class letter to reach a prisoner. So how can they keep in touch with their families?
	The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, mentioned education yesterday. Various other noble Lords have spoken about it. It is obviously essential to enable people when they leave prison to find a job and not return to prison. There are many writers in residence, as the noble and learned Lord informed me. A trust which I ran in the 1980s supported it. I believe that we were the first, besides the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, to do such a thing. We provided the money to bring a writer in residence into Lewes prison. It proved a great success. I have a book produced by Sir David Ramsbotham describing what people have written while in prison under such a system.
	Another problem is that the shortage of staff means that prisoners cannot always be let out of their cells in time to attend lessons. Over a weekend in October, 350 men were prisoners in police cells because there was no room in prisons. Over a weekend they have no rights, no visits, no exercise and, what is possibly worse for them, they are not allowed to smoke.
	I feel very strongly that matters have deteriorated considerably. It is not just a question of numbers. I believe that conditions and everything else have deteriorated considerably since the 1970s. When the noble and learned Lord replies I hope that he will consider the points I have raised.

Lord Addington: My Lords, I wish to concentrate most of my remarks on dyslexia and the problems with which it confronts the Prison Service. About 17.5 is the lowest percentage point for dyslexic prisoners and that figure rises to about 50 per cent. I appreciate the Minister's position because estimates vary. I have looked at most of the figures: as a rough guide about one-third of the prison population suffers from dyslexia at a meaningful level.
	It is appropriate that I declare a couple of interests. I am dyslexic myself. I am a vice president of the British Dyslexia Association, patron of the Adult Dyslexia Organisation and also vice president of the Apex Trust. If noble Lords believe that that series of titles confuses most people, just think what it does to a dyslexic with a bad short-term memory!
	Most of the problems of dyslexia inside the Prison Service are not exclusive, but merely magnify the situation. I believe that that is now fairly well recognised. When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, was at the Home Office he visited the DiSPEL project, which is concerned with the probation service and its dealings with dyslexic prisoners. He was very impressed and surprised by the work being done.
	Prison education, which might help some of these people to break the cycle of offending, is not yet really capable of dealing with a high percentage of the clients. If we accept that 60 per cent of the prison population has a problem with literacy—the percentage may well be higher—the prison education service is going to be dealing with a very high number of dyslexics. Even if the figure is lower, as I mentioned earlier, it must be a major part of the work of the prison education system.
	The Government say that they will deal with basic skills. The first problem begins here. Dyslexia is a disability which means that people have problems with the language areas of the brain; written symbols are particularly difficult for them. Suddenly, the Government's attainment targets of reaching X level of literacy are almost irrelevant to a very high proportion of the people concerned. If one has a major disability it means that the brain does not function in certain ways. Even with correct tuition one may improve, but one will probably never attain in this area. Therefore, the Government have a major problem in their thinking.
	I know that people like to have attainable targets which they can talk about. But the Government have to begin thinking in a more coherent way about this issue. Most of the people we are talking about will have had a bad school record; they may even have not attended for a very large part of their school life. They most certainly will not have attended for a part of their school career. They will have had the attitude that the classroom was a place where one either disrupted the class so one was not shown up to be unable to function or one kept quiet and hoped that the problem would go away. That is the basic problem.
	If that is taking place the question is whether this approach to basic skills is relevant at all. I suggest that the Prison Service must address this question. If GNVQ Level 2 is seen as the employable level, how do we square with the idea of cutting down offending and making people more employable? I believe that that is the brief of the education department of the Prison Service. The fact of the matter is that one may have to change tack slightly and concentrate more on how one handles the disability problem and disclosure.
	Mentoring was mentioned by a previous speaker who is no longer in his place. That may well be a real way forward. For some people, faced with the classroom situation, nothing will be changed or very little and comparatively slowly. One must therefore try to apply more emphasis to the problem. Under the current arrangements the prison education service is not really geared up for the task.
	I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that the Government are at least thinking about the problem. I go against my usual habit and offer a quotation. The Prison Service Standard on disabled prisoners states:
	"The Prison Service will ensure that prisoners with physical, sensory and mental disabilities are, as far as practicable, to participate equally in prison life".
	It further states that,
	"establishments must take positive steps to ensure that disabled prisoners have access to education facilities and programmes and that their communication needs are met".
	It would appear that the prison education service is way off beam in this matter. It is not geared up to the problem. I hope that the Minister will tell me that things are going to get better in this department.
	I do not say that dyslexia is any excuse for offending, but an educational failure who comes from an underprivileged social background will not receive the support that used to be addressed to the "middle-class disease", as dyslexia was referred to a few years ago. In that situation one does not expect one's child to achieve, he does not do so and finds himself incapable of meeting the basic literacy requirements of the most menial of jobs. That might even include writing his name or filling in a timesheet. Then crime becomes a real option. I have not yet added my name to Adult Dyslexia Access. It discovered that when it was dealing with people involved with New Deal prospects, 52 per cent of its client base was dyslexic. The connection between employability and criminal activity is well proven because, regardless of what the tabloids tell us, most crimes are concerned with economic empowerment—getting money—and crimes against property.
	Unless the Minister can tell me that the correct type of assessment and monitoring for dyslexics is built into virtually every programme relating to literacy in prisons, and that that is not simply a case of reaching X number of spelling levels, which certain people will not be able to do, the policy is failing. If it is failing at this level, it might be better to admit that we cannot do it and try to establish something else, rather than wasting a great deal of time and money and raising false hopes.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I had several engagements this afternoon, but I decided not to go to them as the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, follows on so well from my Question about drug treatment centres for young people under 17.
	For many years, I was a member of a board of visitors at a young offenders institution in Yorkshire. There were hardly any drug users or pushers when I started, but I saw a huge increase in my last years there—an increase not only of those involved in drugs, often mixed with alcohol, but also of the younger age group of 15 to 17 year-olds. That is a difficult age group. Those people often have more problems when they are discharged and back in the community, ready to be sucked again into the drug culture that destroys lives and disrupts communities.
	Many mothers of those people are desperate to know what to do. A short time ago, I watched the Prime Minister on television, taking questions from a group of people who brought their problems to him. The meeting may have taken place in Downing Street. The Prime Minister did well until he was faced by the mother of a teenager who had committed suicide in prison and had been involved with drugs. He had a problem giving the mother a suitable answer.
	We must do all we can to stop suicides and bullying in the penal system and find something more suitable that will rehabilitate young people who get involved with drugs. Hard drugs are the scourge of society. To feed their habit young people often have to steal or raise money by prostitution. For some years, I chaired a drug rehabilitation organisation called Phoenix House, which often serves as an alternative to prison. The residents live in family-like houses, of which there are several throughout the country. Before leaving, they are encouraged to go to college and, if possible, are found suitable accommodation. They are given a foundation and hope for the future and not simply turned out into a difficult environment.
	Phoenix House did not cater for the younger group of teenage children. If local authorities had to pay for their time in prison—or young offenders institutions—the story might be different. They might set up some young people's rehabilitation centres with education services. Those young people should be in whole-time education; we need them to be healthy and useful, not ruining their lives and destroying any family life they might have had. It is a challenge for the Government and for everyone, but I believe that an easy way out is for local authorities to let those children go to penal institutions because they do not have to pay and they are relieved of the problem for some months.
	I hope that there will be an improvement when there is more National Health Service input in prisons. That would be very welcome. Every time I visit I come away feeling very concerned about the number of mentally ill people in male and female prisons. I saw them mixed in with the physically ill at the prison health centre at Wandsworth prison. That is a dangerous situation and creates more work for the staff.
	I was on the board of the Yorkshire regional health authority when the move to close mental health hospitals took place some years ago. I said, "I am sure many of these patients will land up in prison". Well, that has happened. What plans does the Minister have for those people when they leave prison? What after-care is there for mentally ill prisoners? If there is none, the local communities to which they return will be fearful and not welcoming. Medical records need to follow the prisoners who need a GP and forward planning before being released into the community. I do not think that that happens often these days.
	This morning, I attended a meeting in the other place about the growing problem of tuberculosis. In London, it is becoming serious. Many foreign-born people are developing the disease. Brent, Newham, Hackney, Ealing and Tower Hamlets have the highest numbers; they can be compared with those for some Asian countries and Russia. I hope that the health service in prisons will keep a close watch on overcrowding, because prisons could become ideal places for the infection to spread. We are very short of critical lung specialists. Communities and prisons could easily become linked and pass TB on to each other. It has been said that some people have been misdiagnosed when TB has been mistaken for asthma.
	I am pleased to say that a halfway house for prisoners returning to the community was named after me. Masham House in Hull is run by Dick Pooley, who was in prison himself, and his wife. It has been very useful in rehabilitating ex-prisoners into the community and keeping them from drifting into trouble. There is a need for more rehabilitation facilities for those returning to the community.
	The Prison Service has a difficult job, but I hope that people working in it do not forget that they are working with people and not just with numbers. Some very good activities take place in prisons, such as horticulture and drama, which can give hope to people who have lost it and enable the depressed to see a glimmer of light. Prison is not just being locked up in a cell. Those who return to the community need more than to walk out of the prison gates with no one to meet them. They need resettlement and a helping hand.

The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, on introducing the debate. Last month, the Queen's Speech offered some hope of improved co-ordination between our criminal justice services. These government intentions are much to be welcomed and encouraged. Yet that may currently be as far as we can go. Improved co-ordination on its own may not achieve very much, unless it is allied to clear objectives. Today, and through the reference of his debate, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, delivered clear objectives. Far better results must be achieved in rehabilitating offenders and in preventing crime in the first place. To achieve those ends, different and wiser measures must be deployed and co-ordinated between the community and penal institutions.
	The first glaring anomaly, of course, is that, while crime overall is falling, the prison population is ever-rising. Therefore, the challenge to the Government becomes not only to cause a reduction but to achieve a dramatic reduction in the prison population. I am sure the Minister will agree with that and that he will want to meet that challenge.
	At the same time, as my noble friend Lord Hurd strictured yesterday, in the Queen's Speech there was hardly a reference to the crisis of prison overcrowding, let alone to the priority of its redress. In that context, it was fitting that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester should have invited and urged the Minister to convene an initiative in order to alleviate the unnecessary and intolerable burden currently imposed upon the Prison Service.
	The next anomaly concerns sentencing policy itself. Despite the availability of non-custodial sentences, these have coexisted with a huge rise in the number of custodial sentences and with a large increase in the number of prisoners from 46,000 in 1991 to more than 72,000 at present and a predicted figure of 83,000 by 2008. The Government say that there will now be new guidelines for magistrates and Crown Courts and their sentences. However, does the Minister concur that far too many young people, both below and above the age of 17, are still detained for minor crimes and that, in the majority of cases, their detention is as futile as it is counter-productive? Can he also confirm that, not only in theory but also in practice, new sentencing guidelines for this category of offending will in fact influence the courts to replace custodial sentences with non-custodial ones?
	Then there is the inconsistency concerning the design of non-custodial sentences. Often they have proved to be ineffective owing to their poor design. The Government deserve credit for having recently introduced the youth justice supervision scheme and, to some extent, detention and training orders. Nevertheless, non-custodial penalties still leave a great deal to be desired. What further plans do the Government have for widening their range and improving their quality in order to reduce reoffending and encourage employment, confidence and purpose?
	In connection with that, and whether they subsist within penal institutions or within the community, a number of indicators and patterns are always easy to recognise and enable us to predict an outcome. The challenge to government and to criminal justice thus becomes that of being prepared to recognise those signs in advance and then to act upon them. Thus far, there has not been much success in that exercise or even much attempt to embark upon it at all.
	One such example is the pattern of post-detention homelessness, which, allied to unemployment, almost always leads to reoffending. Equally, as a number of your Lordships have stressed, within the community it is far more likely that young people will turn to crime if they have had problems with school learning and within their homes than if they have not. Correspondingly, a wide range of responses and expedients may be deployed. These can assist to deter, guide and inspire into constructive purpose and away from crime.
	Certainly much useful work in this field will continue to come, as it already does, from charities, the private sector and from individual effort and initiative. Yet if the Government are really in the business of criminal justice co-ordination, not least through partnership and in other ways, they should develop a more hands-on approach within the community towards crime prevention and, post-detention, towards the prevention of reoffending. Does the Minister support that view and, if so, what type of action are he and the Government prepared to take?
	Finally, it must also now be the Government's task to remove the inconsistency between two related fields. We are still much admired for our record on democracy and human rights. Yet our current poor results from criminal justice lower our reputation for competence internationally as they undermine confidence and morale within the country. Now at last, the resolve must be to achieve proper results where the past 30 years have failed and, from Britain, to set a good and lasting example for justice and stability.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I should like to concentrate my remarks today on young offenders. I also add my compliments to my noble friend Lord Dholakia for introducing this very important debate. Here in the UK we lock up more young people in penal institutions than any other country in the Council of Europe apart from Ireland, Albania, Romania, Macedonia and Turkey. Currently about 2,600 young people under the age of 18 are held in 25 prisons in England and Wales—90 per cent more than 10 years ago. There are no young offender institutions for girls. They are held in adult prisons, despite the commitment made by the right honourable Jack Straw in April 2000 that they would be removed. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us when that objective will be achieved.
	We have the lowest age of criminal responsibility in the EU except for Ireland—a matter severely criticised by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child when it reported two months ago on the UK's track record on children's rights. Do the Government have any plans to change that?
	However, we are not here today to consider the reasons why so many young people commit crimes, although that is an important matter for another day. We are here to consider what we as a society do with them when they have done so. The fact is that we lock them up in overcrowded penal institutions. We do not find out enough about them to be able to help them properly. We put overworked, inexperienced and inadequately trained people in charge of them. We give them inadequate education while they are inside and little or no support when they come out. And we wonder why they reoffend.
	Last week, I saw a programme on television about a young boy who came out of prison after being inside for drug offences. He had been a crack addict. He had only his mother to rely on. There appeared to be no programme in place to follow him up and to get him back on the straight and narrow with a worthwhile life to lead, apart from a weekly meeting with a probation officer. What a failure. I fear for that young man. He and his mother will have to be very strong and determined if he is to stay away from drugs and crime. Why do not all young offenders leaving prison have an action plan to help them to avoid reoffending, and why do they not have the help and professional support to implement that plan? I cannot think of anything that would be more cost-effective than that, in either economic or human terms.
	We know that the processing of individual children through prison is haphazard. Despite the ASSET standard assessment tool, vital information about their history of mental health, drug misuse, family and educational difficulties is rarely available. However, we know quite a lot about them as a group. We know that nearly half of young people in young offender institutions—average age 17—have literacy and numeracy levels below those of the average 11 year-old and that more than a quarter have the numeracy level of a seven year-old. We heard from my noble friend Lord Addington about the high levels of dyslexia. We know that many have mental health and family problems and we know that a high proportion of them are addicted to hard drugs.
	However, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons has described the education service in prisons as an "impoverished service". Ironically, the basic skills courses were the least satisfactory of those inspected. The inspectorate recommended an increased focus on entry level and level 1 courses to line up with the identified need. New money is available but prisons have to bid for it.
	I believe that the system should be turned around completely so that young offenders have an entitlement to an education appropriate to their specific needs. The money should follow the child, not be dependent on the lottery of where children are sent after sentence and how good they are at bidding for new money. Although many young people receive fairly short sentences, their new education plan should be carried on after they leave prison. Prisons should be responsible for that, in the same way that hospitals have to ensure that old people have appropriate care to go to after they leave hospital.
	Most young people in penal institutions receive an average of only 15 hours education per week at present. I am aware that the Youth Justice Board aims by March 2004 to provide them with 30 hours of learning opportunities per week. However, by then hundreds of young people will have left and we will have missed giving them a second chance at education. We know that a large number of them truanted or were excluded from school, so having them in a penal institution is a valuable opportunity for them to try again. However, as my noble friend Lord Addington said, many prisons do not have expert special needs teachers. That area requires emergency input.
	What also concerns me is the environment in which young people find themselves when they are given a custodial sentence. In most cases, it sends them out more damaged, angrier and more alienated than they were when they came in. Children in prison are routinely treated in a way that in other circumstances would trigger a child protection investigation for abuse. For example, between April 2000 and January 2002, solitary confinement was used on juveniles 4,437 times; 976 of those children were locked up alone for more than a week. Bullying and self-harm are common and, sadly, five children have taken their own lives since April 2000 while in the care of the Prison Service, despite the best endeavours of many committed and caring individual professionals in the service.
	As we have now had it clarified in a recent High Court case brought by the Howard League that the Children Act 1989 applies in prisons, many young offenders should now be referred to social services. Currently, not a single social services department visits its local prison to monitor the treatment of children there. The Howard League and six major national children's charities believe that a child, even one who has broken the law, is a child first and foremost—and a vulnerable child at that.
	We are failing them. The reoffending figures described by my noble friend Lord Dholakia alone tell us that. Parents can hardly be held responsible for their children while they are in custody. If they were in residential care, the local authority would be in loco parentis. In prison, they are disowned—de-parented. They are neither children in their own right nor children under the protection of their parents or children's legislation.
	The Government's response to the High Court judgment given by the prisons Minister, Hilary Benn, talked about the need to change one sentence in the Government's policy on children in prison. He also painted a very much rosier picture than anyone else of the conditions for children in prison and the guidelines for their care. But guidelines are one thing and actual practice another. When is that one sentence to be corrected? Does the Children Act 1989 need to be amended? If so, when? What is being done to ensure that all guidelines are being followed and adequate resources provided to ensure that they can be?
	The judge in the case, Mr Justice Munby, said:
	"the State appears to he failing and in some circumstances failing very badly in its duties to vulnerable and damaged children".
	In his response, Mr Benn mentioned the great improvements that have been achieved at Feltham young offender institution as a result of increased investment. In response to that clear evidence, do the Government intend to make a similar level of investment in both capital projects and human resources in other, similar institutions? Human resources seem to be one of the most critical factors and prison officers themselves are painfully aware of the shortcomings.
	It may be cheaper in the short term to underinvest in those young people, but it is certainly not cost-effective in the long term. We know what needs to be done. Prevention is the best solution, by investing in education, parental support and social services to stop young people offending in the first place, but when young offenders are in our care, we must grasp the opportunity to try to correct past mistakes and not fail them again.

Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I join noble Lords who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, on introducing this debate on a subject of fundamental importance. Many noble Lords have spoken brilliantly and supported their arguments with a mass of statistics, but they have mainly concentrated on the issue of prisons. I read the Motion and perhaps misunderstood it, but the words "local communities" sprang out at me. I shall ponder for a moment on local communities and the causes of crime.
	My first reaction on reading the Motion was to ask, "What communities? Do we really have local communities?" Certainly, in the leafy suburbs we do, but they are mainly middle-class people protecting their rights and ensuring that no one undesirable comes to live in their area. There are other kinds of communities, such as those of ethnic and religious minorities—the Islamic community in Tower Hamlets, for example, which I know well, is extremely strong. Then there are special project communities, such as the youth justice boards referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in which a specific group of people within a neighbourhood come together to achieve a particular goal.
	But are there actual communities—groups of people who, because they live in the same village or the same block of flats, are a community? I do not see them. Such communities could have a marvellous role to play in helping prisoners to return and be rehabilitated, providing jobs and housing, supporting ex-offenders, getting them back to work and giving them opportunities to make restitution—all issues mentioned by noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. If we had local communities, they could work together with youth organisations to create diversion from crime—youth work, sport and similar activities, which have been decimated during the past 10 or 20 years by local authorities (because local communities did not persuade their representatives that there were votes in them).
	If we had local communities, they could create an environment for families bringing up young children that gave them the support that they need in the early years, so that those children grow up self-confident, knowing how to love and to be loved and how to relate to other people, having sufficient self-esteem to be able to integrate positively into school and gain an education, having been taught boundaries to acceptable behaviour and having learnt how to control their emotions and understand the emotions of others. Children who have learnt those lessons are much less likely to drop out of school or be drawn into crime. I have made a note at this point to say that I am not being soft and sentimental. I recognise the need for punishment when crime is committed, but it would be much better if we could prevent those crimes in the first place.
	The fundamental question is: what makes young people turn to crime? Is it nature or nurture? Is it the environment in which children grow up? Those issues are under constant review and the subject of constant research. It is worth mentioning that my noble friend Lady Greenfield is at the leading edge of research in that area. The answer is probably that genes play a part, but the evidence increasingly shows that the environment in which the child grows up in its first years—even from year one—is crucial.
	I have given the Minister notice of this question, but it may be difficult to answer: what percentage of those serving prison sentences were born into dysfunctional families? I read last week in a book by a retired prison officer that 90 per cent—nine out of 10—of prisoners come from dysfunctional families. Now, that sounds awfully high to me, but, even if the figure is 50 or 60 per cent, it is an important factor in what we do about the prevention of crime.
	There is no doubt that there is a causal relationship between inadequate or inappropriate parenting in the very early years and a tendency to be drawn into crime later. Whether it is a direct causal relationship or whether the two derive from a common cause remains to be seen. It is in the family, in the very early years, that a child learns or does not learn the self-confidence to give and receive love, the ability to relate to others and to be aware of their concerns, an understanding of his emotions and those of others and the ability to control anger and violence.
	Even in the womb, a child learns to recognise his mother's voice, and his mental and emotional development can be damaged by drugs and hormones in the mother's blood. When a child is born, it is projected into a strange and threatening world, and it needs a cocoon of love and security, which usually takes the form of a loving attachment to its mother or surrogate mother, then to the father and other adults, as time goes on. Without that interaction and that cocoon of love in the first months, the child will tend to grow up insecure and disadvantaged. A child who has never interacted with his parents has not learnt to interact with others. A child who has been subject to instability and violence in the family will have angry, frustrated and violent reactions. If the child's brain becomes hard-wired to such patterns of thought and emotion in the early years, they may be difficult to dislodge later.
	That could be where local communities come in. The Government are fond of saying—probably rightly, I think—that it is not the business of the Government to interfere in the way in which individuals live their life. That may well be true, but, if children suffer because of the way in which individuals lead their life, local communities might be able to set an example by helping and encouraging, by finding ways in which they could influence the family environment in which children spend their very early years.
	I have no time to develop those ideas; I did not expect that I would. I shall make a little "commercial": I hope that my noble friends on the Cross Benches will give me a debate that will give your Lordships the opportunity of discussing the matters further later in this Session.

Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: My Lords, I did not submit my name for inclusion in this debate because I cannot be here after six o'clock. However, in view of the fact that the debate has proceeded so quickly, I shall intervene briefly.
	Hearing my noble friend Lady Sharples say that things had got worse since 1970 made me realise that we have been in exactly this situation before. In 1970, when I became a junior Minister in the Home Office under Mr Maudling, the first paper we received was one from the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale—Sir Philip Allen, as he then was—on the problem of prison overcrowding and on what would happen if we took no action. The only difference is that, then, the figure was 40,000. We were told that disaster would strike at 45,000. Today, there are 72,000 people in prison, and the figure is growing. It is leading inevitably to enormous and difficult problems associated with overcrowding.
	We must remember that the only purpose of sending people to prison, as the Gladstone committee said, is to attempt to reform them so that they come out—they will come out—better men and women. But overcrowding limits the opportunities for education and makes the time for such matters as drug rehabilitation more difficult to find.
	There is only one answer to overcrowding. It is not by building more penal institutes; that takes too long. The answer is to reduce the number of people being sent to prison or the sentences that those who are imprisoned must serve. That means further alternatives to imprisonment. In the 1970s, we introduced community service; that needs a further boost today. I join the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in asking the Government what their proposals for non-custodial sentences are and when we will see them in action. I remember that the Minister was keen about the proposals in the Criminal Justice Bill, but I rather gathered from what he said afterwards—on television, I think—that the money was not perhaps available for their immediate implementation.
	We must change the philosophy that prison works. Prison does not work and is not working today. Of course, it works in the sense that it keeps those who commit crimes out of trouble while they are in prison. But the appalling reconviction rates show that overcrowding works against the reformative aims of prisons. So prison is not working.
	The most encouraging speech I have heard on the matter for a long time was that made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on what is being done with the youth institutions. I hope that we will hear from the Minister the Government's proposals for a solution to overcrowding. Rather than talk about the philosophy that prison works, we should say that, in fact, prison is the final example of the failure of other methods of reformation.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, this afternoon, we have dealt with some of the most difficult issues that we face as a society. In introducing the debate, my noble friend Lord Dholakia showed that the issues of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders are too important to be left to the criminal justice system alone.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle of Bucklow, reminded us, we were told years ago that, if we allowed overcrowding in the prisons to continue, it would be a serious hindrance to any programme for rehabilitation. We heard that from my noble friend himself, who said that it was impossible to deliver a purposeful regime in the present state of overcrowding, and from my noble friend Lady Linklater of Butterstone, who said that overcrowding had reached intolerable levels. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, gave an example of how impossible it is to deliver educational programmes when the prisoners are banged up in their cell for 23 hours a day and there are no officers left to escort them to classes. Such examples reveal a desperate position in our prisons, and it is remarkable that so much success is achieved, through the hard work of prison officers and other staff, who try to help prisoners to deal with offending behaviour and alleviate some of the causes, including addiction to drink and drugs, illiteracy and difficulties with communications. However, it is impossible to deliver effective offending behaviour programmes with the overcrowding that we face.
	My noble friend Lord Addington mentioned the problem of dyslexia. I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, to tell us whether anything has happened as a result of the survey conducted by Professor Karen Bryan of speech, language and communication difficulties among young offenders at HMYOI Swinfen Hall. She found that large numbers of young persons there had significant problems that would hinder them from getting jobs or fitting into society generally.
	At the time, the then Minister for Prisons, Beverley Hughes, told me that the Prisoners Learning and Skills Unit was aware of those findings, had reported them to the Health Policy Unit and that they had been incorporated into the health needs assessment toolkit for prisoners. But there was no standard approach to the screening of young offenders for speech, language and communication difficulties and they were going to discuss rolling out the model that had been used at Polmont YOI in Scotland.
	As Professor Bryan found that many of the problems that she assessed could be mitigated with appropriate professional intervention, this was obviously a way in which young offenders could be helped to regain a foothold in mainstream society. When he comes to reply, perhaps the noble and learned Lord will say what has happened as a result of that work.
	Reference has been made to the probation service and the huge increase in workload that it faces. My noble friend Lady Linklater asked for a massive new funding of the probation service, even in the light of the £70 million increase in its budget for next year, which amounts to between an 8 and 14 per cent rise in the budgets of the 42 probation areas. That sounds good on the face of it, but it should be seen in the context of the major reorganisation of the probation service. It should be related to the number of people it has to supervise, the number of breach actions it has to take and the number of court reports it has to submit.
	The probation service has done remarkably well in reducing the reoffending rate by 3 per cent at the same time as this reorganisation. I hope that this can be sustained on the resources it has been given. But there also has to be a corresponding rise in the contribution of other agencies if offenders are to be kept out of prison.
	The Chief Inspector of Probation, Professor Rod Morgan, states in the introduction to his annual report, which contains a lot of good ideas, that "What Works" programmes—that is the cognitive-behavioural group work programmes—only work in the context of effective case management which tackles the whole range of criminogenic factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, accommodation problems, lack of education and vocational skills, unemployment and debt, which characterise most supervised offenders.
	In the light of this—it seems so obvious as not to need re-statement—I was alarmed when we heard yesterday at the All-Party Penal Affairs Group meeting that of the 90,000 prisoners released in England and Wales this year, a third had nowhere to go on release. A Home Office study found that 71 per cent of the prisoners with no place to go had received no housing advice while they were inside. But, according to Paul Cavadino of NACRO, people discharged into stable housing are 20 per cent less likely to reoffend than those who are homeless. They are also more likely, he said yesterday, to stay on drug rehabilitation programmes, to get jobs and to continue with sex offender treatment programmes.
	Yet the courts have ruled in two recent cases in Lambeth and Hounslow that prisoners who lost their homes—as a third of them do as a direct result of their prison sentence through not being able to pay the rent or the mortgage—had made themselves homeless intentionally. This may have been true at the time of the offence, but I do not think that Parliament intended it to continue after the sentence had been served. The Guidance on the Homelessness Act states that a person has a priority need for accommodation if he or she is vulnerable as a result of a custodial sentence, but then adds that only a minority of ex-prisoners are likely to be vulnerable because the probation service is responsible for seeing that their accommodation needs are met. That is not a realistic proposition and I invite the Government to reconsider that policy.
	We heard yesterday also at the penal affairs group from Marie McNicol of the St Giles Trust, who said that her organisation was providing housing advice and help to prisoners at Wandsworth prison. For instance, in November alone, it saw 55 prisoners, helped five to keep their tenancies and referred 24 to other agencies. The trust is also training long-term prisoners to give advice to others. In doing so, they can acquire an NVQ, which will be useful when they finally come out.
	Another example of good practice is the service provided by the Anglia Care Trust at Norwich prison, quoted in the Social Exclusion Unit's report Reducing Re-offending by Ex-prisoners. The trust negotiated with landlords on behalf of prisoners to allow them to keep their tenancies and advised them on debt management. Ultimately, only 5 per cent of the prisoners leaving Norwich had nowhere to go. Surely it would pay to have similar advice services throughout the whole of the prison system in terms of reducing the homelessness of ex-prisoners and hence reducing reoffending.
	If local authorities are not going to take any responsibility for the needs of the homeless ex-prisoners, then at least there should be specialist accommodation available to them such as that mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham—that is, the hostel in Hull which is named after her. I congratulate her on that and the fact that it is run by an ex-prisoner.
	There is surplus accommodation in many northern towns which might be suitable for conversion to small units for ex-prisoners without family ties. The French have such a network. I spoke on Monday to a man who I have corresponded with for many years, who had come out that day after spending 29 years and four months in prison. He was discharged to a hostel in Nancy as a condition of his release. This man started in Parkhurst years ago and I continued to correspond with him when he was transferred to the French system. He did not mind being offered a place in a hostel miles from his relatives—he was only too delighted to come out after such a length of time, I can assure your Lordships. The same might be true here. If we use the space available in the northern towns we could build small hostels which would accommodate those who had nowhere else to go on release. That would prevent a great deal of reoffending.
	The Halliday reforms mean that fewer people will be sent to prison in future for short periods. It is obviously hoped that correspondingly fewer will lose their homes. The implementation of Custody Plus will lead to the supervision of all prisoners on release—including those given short sentences who, up to now, have been left to sink or swim. But there will be far greater demands on services in the community and the money should be provided out of the savings in prison costs.
	That brings me to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—what is the community going to do? On the face of it, enormous amounts of money are available to accommodate the demands in the community arising from the Halliday reforms. There is the Single Regeneration Budget, which has among its objectives the reduction of crime and drug abuse and the improvement of community safety. The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund of £900 million over three years also has as an objective the reduction of crime.
	The Community Empowerment Fund is a pot of money for the voluntary and community sector to help it to get involved in local strategic partnerships, where the authorities receive money from the NRF. The Neighbourhood Renewal Community Chest is another fund to provide support for setting up community organisations in NRF areas, and that could include offender support programmes.
	The Time Limited Development Fund is designed to inspire local people to get involved in voluntary activities that tackle social exclusion, including, again, the social exclusion of offenders. The New Deal for Communities is a programme that gives the poorest areas the resources to deal with multiple problems, including high levels of crime. Several noble Lords have referred to the Futurebuilders Fund, which was criticised by either my noble friend Lady Linklater or my noble friend Lady Walmsley because it is a one-off fund of £125 million which does not allow for any continuity in the capacity building of the voluntary and community sector.
	In this jargon jungle there is a bio-diversity of steering groups, voluntary sector consortiums, community champions and "community planning managers" competing for money, but it is not easy to identify the end product in terms of delivering services that will reduce the amount of re-offending and attack the causes of crime, such as alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, or with helping offenders in the community to overcome problems such as illiteracy or lack of social skills. I ask the Minister to what extent any voluntary agencies aiming at these specific problems have submitted bids under each of the headings, and what is their record of success?
	My noble friend Lady Walmsley spoke about the lottery of provision for young people in the community after discharge. When there is a radical change in direction by the Government in terms of sentencing policy, which in turn requires a corresponding realignment of both statutory and voluntary services provided in the community, leaving it to the luck of the draw in the bidding for these funds is not likely to produce an optimum solution. The Social Exclusion Unit says that there should be a national rehabilitation strategy to include the widened availability of offending behaviour programmes—education and training; mental health programmes; drugs and alcohol programmes; and family support—and that that strategy should have its own budget instead of being dependent on bids made incidentally under the variety of programmes already mentioned.
	I hope that the noble and learned Lord will comment on the lack of co-ordination in all these systems of support within the community, and that, as a result of this debate, there will be a greater focus on measures to help the community itself to deal with reoffending and the rehabilitation of offenders.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, there are four key phrases in the Motion introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and each merits a debate in itself. But they are all subtly tied together in the noble Lord's frame.
	Let me begin with the role of local communities. Local communities are, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, suggested, not as strong as they used to be. They have lost their supporting pillars in the post office, the corner shop, church and chapel—and not just in the country but in the towns as well. Neighbours are strangers to each other in many places. The "local community" in our parlance is, I suspect, the community of local authorities and service providers.
	Policing in the community has changed a great deal. I was rather surprised by the number of speakers in the home affairs debate on the Address in the other place who complained about inadequate policing in their constituencies. It is not surprising when one considers that over the past 10 years some 730 communities have lost their police stations and are now policed solely by patrol cars.
	The key point is that the police are our first line of defence against crime in the local community, be it urban or rural, and police performance is inevitably variable. There is scope for improvement.
	Part of the answer must lie in improved recruitment of special constables and self-help schemes such as neighbourhood watch and other voluntary schemes. We must, of course, beware of the vigilante tendency and make sure that people invested with a semblance of authority do not abuse it. We must also ensure that anti-social behaviour orders really work. We know of the difficulties and delays in obtaining them. Seeing to it that they are not disregarded is another matter, and the same is true of other behaviour orders.
	The Government set great store by their crime and disorder reduction partnerships. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, told me in a Written Answer on 19th November that,
	"CDRPs are key to the local delivery of reductions in crime and disorder".
	He went on to say:
	"We have a large programme of work in hand to assess and improve partnership performance".
	The Minister stated:
	"There are currently 354 crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) in England and 22 in Wales".
	All that is good news for crime prevention in local communities and we shall follow the progress of CDRPs and study their effectiveness with keen interest.
	With regard to the contribution of local communities to rehabilitation, we are all aware of the importance of the family and the workplace in this context. Ideally, rehabilitation should be a natural process of restoration of the individual wrongdoer to self-respect and a respectable place in the society whence he came. We know that the reality is different. Too often, the offender is returned to the poor social conditions that may have led him to criminal activity in the first place and it simply leads to a repetition of earlier behaviour.
	Implicit in all of this is the vast transformation that is required to improve the quality of life in our most deprived communities, where housing is deplorable, normal family life is under severe strain, sink schools abound and decent work is hard to come by. A drugs culture aggravates the situation. Anti-social behaviour becomes the norm rather than the exception.
	I was saddened to read that the Schools Health Education Unit reported that the proportion of boys aged 14 and 15 who said that they had tried cannabis had risen from 19 per cent in 1999 to 29 per cent in 2001 and the proportion of girls of the same age had risen from 18 per cent to 25 per cent. We all know how drug addiction leads to other crimes to support the habit and all too frequently to imprisonment. Drug addicts need treatment for their rehabilitation. I am glad that the updated drugs strategy document published today recognises this.
	The probation service has been much mentioned in the course of the debate. It is under pressure—so much so that I understand the staff are being balloted on strike action. The chief inspector, Mr Rod Morgan, blames the magistrates for,
	"clogging up jails with petty offenders when a sting in the wallet would do".
	The chairman of the council of the Magistrates' Association, Harry Mawdsley, has denied the charge and quoted recent figures showing 75 per cent of offenders receiving a fine compared with only 4 per cent receiving a custodial sentence. Millions of fines remain unpaid. Yet the Government appear to favour this remedy for anti-social behaviour. Will fines work, even with enforcers, or will they be ignored?
	When we turn to the penal system, the outstanding fact is that our prisons are bulging at the seams with the highest population ever of more than 72,500. Do the Government expect the prison population to rise still further in the years ahead, with all the consequences of overcrowding which are already glaringly obvious? I should be grateful for an answer to that question. In our debate on the Address on 21st November, the noble Lord, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, presented us with an analysis of that figure. It struck me that more than half of the inmates serve short sentences of three months or less. There are nearly 5,000 mentally ill people in prison. It is clear that the Prison Service cannot hope to perform its functions properly in the current circumstances.
	It is not surprising that the Social Exclusion Unit reported that, in 1997, 58 per cent of prisoners released were reconvicted within two years—a fact brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. Eighteen to 20 year-old male prisoners were reconvicted at the rate of 72 per cent over the same period—and the prison population then was 10,000 fewer!
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, made wide-ranging recommendations for the reform of the prison system in 1991, after the Strangeways riot. Among his recommendations was the development of community prisons, which I certainly support, bearing in mind the importance of family visits and support for prisoners in the rehabilitation process, as my noble friend Lady Sharples mentioned.
	The Prison Reform Trust's review of prison visitor centres in January this year strongly recommended that prisons should be located in places readily accessible to visitors. I know that the Government intend to build two prisons, but have they totally abandoned the recommendation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in this matter? If so, I believe that their judgment is at fault.
	There is a touch of "authoritarianism in an Armani suit" about some of the Government's proposals. My noble friend Lord Kingsland attributed the sentiment, if not the words, to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. I suppose it is the outcome of the Prime Minister's pledge to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. But the Government must be tough on themselves, too. They must seriously question the likely efficacy of their proposed remedies.
	Arresting recidivism plays a very important role in reducing crime. Like the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I was impressed by the summary given by the chief executive of NACRO, of which the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, is chairman. It stressed the importance of jobs, accommodation, family support, literacy and numeracy. In the light of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, we can add dyslexia to that category.
	We in the Conservative Party are particularly concerned about persistent young offenders and getting them off what my friend in the other place Oliver Letwin describes as the conveyor belt of crime. I note the great interest of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in this area. We have proposed long rehabilitative sentences for persistent young offenders. Those would include not only imprisonment but, beyond that, a long period of active rehabilitation and reform. The sentencing framework, which is being consulted upon widely, would comprise a period of imprisonment and, where necessary, detoxification; a period of intensive rehabilitation in conditions of open custody; and a prolonged period during which offenders would be closely supervised and given support to ensure that they found and kept appropriate accommodation and a useful occupation. That is a worthwhile policy. It is an area of work that has its rewards, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Warner, will agree. That policy promises a better future not only for those young people but for society as a whole.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I join noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, on obtaining this debate and on the quality of his contribution both in this debate and in his work on resettlement and penal issues in his various roles. I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth that this is a particularly significant day on which to hold the debate, given the discussion in another place, chaired by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, when a wider audience examined all these issues. It has been an excellent debate for several reasons.
	I start with the opening proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia: there is plainly a connection between social exclusion and crime. I shall also quote the statistic he gave that 40 per cent of crimes are committed in 10 per cent of communities. The noble Lord is right to start the debate by asking what is the effect on communities.
	We will never deal with the problem of crime simply by looking at the prison population or at what happens in the criminal justice system. We must look much wider. The Government have been doing that methodically since they came to power in 1997. First, it is necessary to seek to provide intervention for those who are likely to go into crime to try to divert them from it. Programmes such as Sure Start seek to deal with that, as do others run by individual agencies, voluntary and community groups. I have seen in Durham how the police are taking proactive and helpful steps to provide alternative activity for families they identify as ones that might go into crime.
	The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked me—and he gave me warning of his question—to what extent one can tie up dysfunctional families with those who commit crime. I cannot provide a precise figure, but I can give three indicators. Two per cent of the general population have been taken into care as children, compared to 27 per cent of those who commit crimes. Eleven per cent of the general population have run away from home as a child; the figure for male and female sentenced prisoners is 47 and 50 per cent respectively. Sixteen per cent of the general population have had a family member convicted of a criminal offence compared with 43 per cent of prisoners. Those statistics indicate the areas to which the noble Lord referred. We can identify people who may commit crimes and we should try to intervene as quickly as possible.
	It is not just about those interventions; it is about taking steps to try to prevent crime in other ways. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and others said, that is not just a matter for the criminal justice system. Crime and disorder reduction partnerships, on which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, was kind enough to congratulate us, are important because they recognise that it is not just the police, the courts and the prosecution who must contribute to the reduction of crime, but also the local authorities, health authorities and the community and voluntary sector. They must consider such matters as where street-lighting should be improved to reduce crime and assess the priorities of individual communities for reducing crime—for example, by improving transport and providing better healthcare. Crime and disorder reduction partnerships should do that.
	Another aspect of crime reduction or prevention was highlighted by my former noble friend—he is now a Cross-Bencher—the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in relation to the Youth Justice Board. It has made a remarkable and effective contribution under the noble Lord's leadership to dealing with crime prevention among young people. Not only does it deal with those who are already in the criminal justice system; its work includes youth inclusion programmes such as Summer Splash which reach a significant number of young people. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to the number of crimes that may well not have been committed as a result of those programmes. It is right that this debate should be rooted in the community, so that we can identify the fact that much work is being carried out on diversion and crime prevention.
	Another important element—the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to this—is fighting degeneration and hoping to improve regeneration. That involves neighbourhood renewal funds and New Deal for Communities. If one goes to areas where those programmes exist, one discovers that, almost invariably, communities are most concerned about crime and anti-social behaviour. The number of New Deal for Communities programmes that have invested money in community policing, CCTV and local measures to prevent and reduce crime indicates the extent of communities' concern.
	The problem of drugs overarches much of the issue. Communities, particularly deprived ones, fear that drugs will make local residents' children victims, offenders or both. We must address the problem of drugs. Yesterday's updated drugs strategy does precisely that by seeking to ensure that more treatment is available—for offenders as much as anyone else. It seeks to offer those who offend the opportunity of taking treatment to get rid of the causes of crime. But if they do not accept treatment, they should rightly expect the consequences of the criminal justice system to fall upon them at the bail hearing, the sentencing hearing and thereafter in sentencing. It must be clear that treatment should be offered where it is available. That is the aim of the updated strategy.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, will the Minister extend his remarks to alcohol, given that it is an even more important factor than drugs in the etiology of crime?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, alcohol is an important factor, but drugs are becoming an increasingly important factor.
	Those who confront the problem of crime in deprived communities expect the criminal justice system to be effective when someone is put in its hands. It is important to underline that the more that people have confidence in the criminal justice system, the more they will feel secure in their homes and communities. It is a vital point.
	I turn to the criminal justice system. Obviously, crime will never be eradicated. Once defendants have been convicted in the criminal justice system, that system should aim in part to reduce reoffending. Effective community penalties are one vital way in which reoffending will be reduced significantly. The National Probation Service, which has had significantly increased funding since 1997, is developing programmes for what works in reducing reoffending behaviour, and early published results suggest that some progress is being made. The reconviction rate among the cohort who started receiving What Works programmes in the two years following 1999 has been more than 3 per cent lower than predicted.
	People have to know that progress is being made in community sentences so that courts are willing to sentence offenders to community sentences where appropriate. The more that community sentences work, the less it will be necessary to send people to prison. As all noble Lords will accept, however, it is necessary to send certain categories of offender to custody. Broadly, those categories are dangerous, violent and sexual offenders, and seriously persistent offenders to whom every opportunity for rehabilitation has been offered but who have not taken it. The community must have some confidence that custody will be imposed after every reasonable opportunity has been offered but not taken.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater of Butterstone, mentioned "two strikes and you're out" in relation to breaches of community penalties. If the courts are to be confident about imposing community penalties, a balance must be struck whereby an appropriate response follows a breach. If we do not mete out an appropriate response in such cases, what is the point of having community penalties with attached conditions? Although there is no automaticity whereby a custodial sentence is immediately imposed after two strikes, there must be a sense that the conditions will be enforced. Nevertheless, the conditions will be enforced proportionately.
	Apart from the above categories of offender—dangerous, sexual or violent offenders, and those who are seriously persistent—the court should consider the range of alternatives now available to sentencers, such as the wide range of community penalties; the wider range of tagging options; and the drug treatment and testing orders which have been imposed now on just under 10,000 people. On the face of it, it looks as if those alternatives are producing results in dealing with drug offenders. Although it is too soon to ascertain the results by means of reconviction rates, those are the right sort of community penalties. They provide hope that some progress will be made in relation to reconviction rates. I make it clear, however, that custody is the inevitable and appropriate result for certain categories of prisoner to ensure not only the required punishment but also public protection. I think there is no escape from that fact.
	I shall try to deal with some of the many points that have been made. I fear that, because of time, I shall not be able to deal with all of them. I thoroughly endorse the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, about the involvement of community and voluntary groups. He mentioned Crime Concern, NACRO and other groups, all of which do exceptional work. He also mentioned the need for core management funding, which is absolutely vital. He mentioned too the cross-cutting review on the voluntary sector, which draws out many of the points he raised. The message coming out loud and clear from the review is that voluntary and community sector groups can do so much which state-funded organisations cannot do, due to the inevitable inflexibilities of statutory organisations, and which the private sector has no interest in doing. The Government accept that their role is vital in that respect. The noble Lord also cited the example of acceptable behaviour contracts in the London borough of Islington, where the voluntary sector has played a vital part. That scheme, of which I thoroughly approve, has now been rolled out more widely.
	The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and various other noble Lords referred to the current overcrowding in the Prison Service. One should, however, not lose sight of what the Prison Service has achieved. I have been asked in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, how many prisoners are currently sharing cells. I gave the figure of 21 per cent. In 1991, however, the figure was 29 per cent. Until 1994, in a significant number of cases, three people were sharing a cell.
	The quality of education in prison has improved dramatically, although much still has to be done. The Prison Service has a humane and dedicated reformer in Martin Narey. One should not underestimate the extent of the achievement. Noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle of Bucklow, will recall visiting prisons five years ago. I am sure that their impression from more recent visits will be very different. Although much still needs to be done, we should not even remotely put the debate in the context that nothing has been improved.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth raised the issue of life prisoners and referred to their problems on release. Life prisoners raise particular problems. We are dealing in a significant number of cases with crimes in which the victims themselves will suffer for the rest of their lives. Frequently, the life sentence has to be for punishment and for people to realise that society must extract a penalty through the criminal justice system so that there is confidence in the criminal justice system.
	I have already referred to many of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. I thoroughly endorse the work, under her chairmanship, of Rethinking Crime and Punishment, which was funded by the Esmee Fairbairn trust. I suspect that that will be a significant contribution to the debate. It is important that such work is undertaken. The noble Baroness drew attention specifically to tagging and restorative justice, both of which can bring great progress in suitable alternatives to current penalties. I endorse her support for the idea of widespread partnership with the voluntary and community sector.
	As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to a number of the alternatives to custody such as ISSP—a very important alternative which provides a robust and effective intervention that can have an effect on offenders' reoffending behaviour.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, referred to the problems of prisoners' wives and contact with prisoners. I agree entirely with the proposition underlying her remarks—namely, that prisoners who maintain contact with their family have a better chance of not reoffending. Other noble Lords also made that point. The Prison Service accepts the point, although putting it into practice becomes more difficult as the number of prisoners in custody increases. The proposition, however, is accepted.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, also identified the lack of communication and cited some examples, such as a three-month wait for delivery of a parcel and a nine-day wait for a first class letter. As I said, we accept the principle she outlined. We seek to promote communication, which is so important in reducing reoffending.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, in view of what the Minister has just said, will he clarify the point about community prisons? Do the Government accept the proposal from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, or have they abandoned it?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I am not precisely clear about what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, had in mind in relation to community prisons. The Criminal Justice Bill makes provision for intermittent custody, which would allow an offender to be in custody for a period—at the weekend, for example—while being able to hold on to a job. I am not sure whether that goes as far as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, suggested in his report. But it goes some way towards allowing an offender to hold on to a job and at the same time spend time in custody.
	The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised an important point about dyslexia. The prisoners' learning and skills unit is seeking to improve the identification of dyslexia and other learning needs. A new national diagnostic indicator is currently on trial. As well as identifying dyslexia, the prisoners' learning and skills unit is supporting the teaching of basic skills by providing prisons with practitioner guides on training those with learning difficulties and providing accompanying training. I am sure that that does not go as far as the noble Lord would wish, but I suspect that the significance of seeking to identify those with dyslexia goes some of the way.

Lord Addington: My Lords, there seems to be great emphasis on achieving certain targets in literacy. However, will the Minister consider the idea of having teachers explain dyslexia to others, as some of those targets will be unattainable by many of those with the condition?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I shall write to the noble Lord in that respect.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, raised the issue of drugs, which I have dealt with. She asked about the plans for those who come out of prison who are mentally ill. That is an important issue. The Prison Service is looking at development work on prison health. Recommendations have been made in the social exclusion unit report and the Government are looking to address the shortfalls in the service provided. Development work on prison health in the past two years has included new investment to rebuild or refurbish some of the worst prison healthcare centres to try to improve the position before the prisoner is released. New NHS mental health in-reach teams, as part of the NHS Plan, are expected to cover around half of all prisons by March 2004. We are trying to make sure that there is some support when prisoners come out. That is not the position in the vast majority of cases, but it is the aim, as set out in the social exclusion unit report.
	The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, raised similar issues. He referred in particular to overcrowding and the dramatic increase in the prison population. He called for more community sentences to be imposed, which is what we are seeking to do, by providing a wider range of community sentences and by providing evidence that community sentences work. He also referred to action to divert people from the criminal justice system, which we all agree is extremely important.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised a number of points. She drew attention to the problem of the number of girls in prisons where there are no proper facilities. She referred to the commitment made by my right honourable friend Mr Straw some time ago. She also referred to inadequate education in prison. More could be done, but I emphasise that progress has been made. She referred to the Children Act decision by Mr Justice Mumby last week which the prisons Minister, Mr Hilary Benn, welcomed. I cannot give a date as to when the relevant sentence—the sentence in the guidance—will be amended, but I shall write to the noble Baroness.
	With regard to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I have answered his first question. I agree that the debate should be about how the community can help by supporting prisoners when they come out, as well as recognising that a penal policy must address the needs of the community as a whole.
	The noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, said that we have been here before, and that he was there when prison overcrowding became a problem. He said that the only purpose of prison is to reform. I think that there are certain prisoners who have to be imprisoned because if punishment is not meted out to such defendants, people will not have faith in the criminal justice system as an adequate and proportionate response to certain sorts of crime. He said that we should reduce the number of people sent to prison and the time that they spend there. We are seeking sensible alternatives to prison in relation to community penalties while recognising that certain categories of defendant will need a custodial sentence.
	The noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, asked whether we would change our philosophy in relation to prison. The Criminal Justice Bill contains a range of alternatives. It contains the fundamental approach that sending people to prison for a short time and then providing them with no support afterwards does little to reduce reoffending. That is why the custody-plus approach has been introduced. As the noble Lord identified, by implication if not explicitly, that requires additional money for the probation service to provide the support that is necessary. The figures have been set out in the accompanying financial memorandum to the Bill.
	Everyone engaged in these issues agrees that support is vital for people who come out of prison—especially for those who have gone into prison because of drugs. If support is not provided immediately, they will quickly drift into crime again. We must focus on that important issue.
	I am afraid that my time is up. It has been an extremely significant and important debate, and I hope that we shall have similar debates in the future.

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I thank all the noble Lords who have participated in the debate, and many who wrote to me because they could not do so because of other commitments. I also thank the noble and learned Lord the Minister for his comprehensive reply.
	Two clear issues have been identified: the non-custodial alternative and community participation in programmes. I hope that the Minister for prisons will reflect on this debate.
	I conclude by quoting Winston Churchill's famous words when he was a Minister in the Home Office. He said:
	"The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is the most unfailing test of the civilisation of any country".
	We need to secure a decisive shift in the public's perception of crime and punishment. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Emergency Planning

Lord Roper: rose to call attention to the need for more effective planning for emergencies between government departments, local government and the other bodies concerned; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, I apologise to the House for the relatively limited notice for this debate, but we on these Benches felt that the House should have an opportunity to consider the important issues of the arrangements for planning for civil emergencies and the liaison between Government departments, local government and the other bodies concerned.
	We are enjoined each day at the beginning of our work here at Prayers to work for the "peace and stability of the realm". That requires us to consider the question of effective planning for emergencies—those occasions when the realm and its peace are disturbed. It is important for this House to have the opportunity to hear from the Government what has been done and to ask questions about the things that have not yet been done.
	There is no doubt that the events that occurred in the United States 14 months ago on 11th September have transformed the range of emergencies that it is now necessary for our Government at all levels to plan for. There was an initial reaction of the need for a substantial change in the machinery of Government—perhaps the creation of a department with an over-arching responsibility for these matters, which was perhaps parallel with the arrangements made in the United States in the department now headed by Governor Ridge. There are arguments for and against such a change.
	But in this country the more one looks at the matter and the more one becomes aware of the range of departments of central government that are involved, of the important and central role of our local authorities, and, indeed, of many other bodies, the more one can understand why the Prime Minister has decided against such a change in the machinery of government. I do not feel that there is a great deal to be said for re-opening that question today.
	However, it is necessary to point out that there are some drawbacks in the present situation. It is not altogether clear to noble Lords in this House or to people elsewhere where the responsibility for these matters lies. We are aware of the various committees, including, at the highest level, the War Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, which have responsibilities for these matters and of the committees chaired by the Home Secretary. But no Minister gives his prime attention to these issues. There is always, therefore, the risk that these important issues—I shall return to this matter in terms of resources and legislation—may not get the priority that they deserve. That makes the question of parliamentary accountability difficult. When I tabled the Motion I was not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, or the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, would reply. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, may have responsibility for the matters I am discussing given the range of departmental concerns involved.
	In looking at what has been achieved over the past 14 months I am reminded of the story of a glass being half empty or half full. One feels that a number of matters have not yet been tackled but one should also be impressed by some of the matters which have already been addressed by central government, by authorities in the London area and by some other local authorities. In its sixth report published in July the House of Commons Defence Committee drew attention to a number of problems. The Government outlined the position in their response to that report and in the Cabinet Office's useful progress report of 9th September entitled, The United Kingdom and the Campaign Against International Terrorism. It was, however, unfortunate that that progress report did not constitute a parliamentary paper. I shall want to return to the question of whether the Government should submit an annual report to Parliament detailing what they have achieved in this area, the resources they have spent and what their strategy is for the future.
	The National Audit Office produced a report on 15th November on NHS emergency planning. I refer also to the report of my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew on the operation during 2001 of the Terrorism Act 2000. My noble friend commented on problems with regard to access to seaports and airports where he feels that there is a need for increased security activity.
	All of that is encouraging. However, I fear that from time to time it is also discouraging. I am encouraged by the fact that much has been done. In some areas performance is good. However, there are also areas where there is room for considerable improvement. On a positive note, I very much welcome the appointment of Sir David Omand as the security and intelligence co-ordinator. Given his previous experience and qualities he is uniquely fitted to the post.
	However, I am discouraged by the significant variations in performance between different areas. There are also real gaps in our preparedness, as I shall indicate. I refer to a number of the issues raised in earlier studies. How much progress has been made on those issues? The Government's response to the House of Commons Defence Committee mentioned the need for mutual aid agreements between the emergency bodies and referred to the development of a national mutual aid agreement between the fire authorities which it was intended should be completed by the end of this year. I hope that in spite of the other incidents affecting the fire authorities the Minister will tell us that it will be possible to have such a mutual aid agreement in place by the end of this year.
	I refer to a further question that needs to be answered. What resources are now being devoted to training those who have responsibilities in these areas? How far has Easingwold been given a new role as a college to train those involved in emergency planning—a new role in a new situation? What are the Government's targets as regards the number of people who will undertake training courses in the next two years?
	It seems to me that if one has such a complex structure, from time to time there is a need for the relevant personnel to undertake high-level exercises. That should be done not only in the various departments of state and, indeed, not only in London but throughout the country. I should be glad to know what plans there are for such exercises.
	I quote from the Government's response to the House of Commons Defence Committee:
	"The Government recognises the importance of keeping the public informed, reassured and engaged".
	That is an excellent sentiment but I should be glad to know what the Government's strategy has been to carry that into effect.
	The Territorial Army will now be linked with the civil emergency authorities. I should be interested to know what progress has been made as regards the announcement made in another place on 31st October by the Minister, Mr Adam Ingram, who indicated,
	"There will be some 280 new reserve posts in Army . . . headquarters to provide regional planning, liaison and command and control".—[Official Report, Commons, 31/10/02; col. 1026.]
	That link between our Territorial Army and our civil emergency services is essential. When do we expect the new arrangements to become operational?
	The central issue behind a number of these detailed issues is that it is not clear, in the absence of specific ministerial responsibility, that the Government are giving enough priority to these questions. Unfortunately, there is a suspicion that there is more than a little truth in the remark of one senior official that his job was little more than "the management of complacency". The failure of the civil contingencies Bill to appear in the gracious Speech and the lack of any significant increase in resources for civil defence, as reflected in the Written Answer given by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in Hansard of 3rd December, suggest that perhaps we have not had the significant increases which are needed.
	The Government were aware of the need for a new legislative framework before the terrorist attacks. The Cabinet Office progress report of 9th September states:
	"Proposals for new legislation will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows".
	However, there is nothing in the gracious Speech about that. The most recent information that I have indicates that we are likely to have another framework document for consultation early in the New Year followed by a draft Bill by the summer of 2003. Almost two years will have passed between the attack on the United States and the new legislation. The Local Government Association believes that that legislation is essential.
	I refer to resources. The figures announced today of only £19 million for all our local authorities means that effectively expenditure in this area will have been static for seven years. Emergency planners are convinced that that is not enough. It is a ridiculous amount. The increase for each local authority for next year will be all of £386. That does not seem to be a serious way to address the issue.
	The noble Lord, Lord Healey, once described defence as the first form of social security. The preparations that we now have to make to meet the new challenges of international terrorism are certainly central to the security of our society. This House and the other place have therefore a responsibility to hold the Government to account in these critical fields.
	My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Hardy of Wath: My Lords, I do not propose to make a long speech. I look forward to hearing my noble friend's response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, not least those relating to questions of relationship and links. I also want to offer a word of reassurance.
	I believe most people recognise that the Government are right to give high priority to seeking to defeat terror and to maintain through positive action and by intelligence the means of defeating terror. But at the same time, even though that priority is maintained and devoted work proceeds, there can be no guarantee that there will not be an outrage or outrages in this country at some point. It is therefore right that we see adequate provision in all our areas for response to need.
	Bearing in mind that local authorities, like all other human institutions, are not infallible, I said to my ward counsellor friend who is the mayor elect of Rotherham that I should like to see what arrangements have been made in my own local authority. Immediately, arrangements were made for me to go to the Rotherham emergency suite. I am not always impressed when I make visits in the area, but I left that meeting enormously impressed, not least because the authority had had the wit to appoint a very able man: Alan Matthews, who had just retired as regimental sergeant major for the Coldstream Guards.
	It is perhaps unsurprising that we have a lean, efficient, well organised unit there. He has worked with neighbouring authorities and the emergency organisations and produced sheets of paper so that in my area there is every reasonable arrangement that can be made. I do not think they need more than another £396, but I leave that for the local authority to decide; it would probably like more.
	Where authorities act wisely, local communities can sleep more safely in their beds. It is not likely to mean that we reduce the risk of an outrage or a disaster, but I think we have put the right people in place to respond, although I have one query.
	Mr Matthews' appointment is significant because we do not make adequate use of people who retire from Her Majesty's Armed Forces. They have usually had high quality training; extremely relevant experience; and at a relatively early age they will have learned some of the arts of leadership and man management. We tend to forget that. People like Mr Matthews can be usefully employed in this area at no great cost; they nearly all have some sort of pension, even if military pensions are not as generous as they should be.
	There need to be adequate links and relationships between the services and local authorities. In my area we have carried out exercises, sometimes only on paper, but they can also be valuable. We do not want everyone to be disturbed and subject to upheaval every five minutes.
	I understand the arrangements are that if there is an outrage or a disaster, as soon as a police officer appears on the scene he takes command. That may be generally worth while. It may be useful and appropriate for a police officer to be in charge; he has authority in his uniform. But let us think of a situation in which the first officer on the scene is a police constable with only a few months' or weeks' service. He will be expected to take charge, and experienced local authority officers or people from the Territorial Army or the fire service—when it is functioning properly—will have to comply immediately with that police officer's commands.
	If it is an officer with significant experience and weight, I see no problem; in most cases there would not be one. But there is always a difficulty in having a general rule which prevents us from applying the common sense and flexibility that should always be available in the situation. I await my noble friend's response to the noble Lord, Lord Roper. I hope that he is satisfied that the example I have seen in Rotherham in recent months is not an unusual one. We should ensure that local authorities are made aware of good practice in the whole area of local government.
	I said to my noble friend Lord Bach when we were discussing the new chapter that he could come to see the practice in Rotherham. I hope that in their busy programmes Ministers can take time to carry out some visits in order to encourage the good and to be in a position to exhort more properly and effectively those who are not doing as well as they should be. There is no scope and there should be no place for failure. We must be well prepared. I am extremely pleased about the level of preparation I observed in my area.

Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Roper for securing the debate. My contribution will be from the perspective of local authority involvement.
	During the 1970s and in the 1980s—when I was a very new county councillor—greater public awareness and cynicism painted a picture of civil defence activities as futile and vaguely ridiculous. I remember some local authorities decided to protect their citizens by declaring that they were "nuclear-free zones". I believe someone in the other place described that as being as potentially effective as someone declaring that their home was a burglar-free territory. In planning and training for civil defence, the danger from chemical agents was recognised, but then, to a large extent, treated with silence. The threat of biological agents was hardly even whispered.
	As a new county councillor in North Yorkshire, I was invited to attend a training course at what was then called the Civil Defence College—in Easingwold. It is still there today, just renamed. I had heard muttered remarks about the college; how secretive the place was and how we should not talk about the information that we gleaned there. What utter rubbish! It was, indeed, a difficult place to get into—and almost as difficult to get out of. After one particularly difficult day of unremitting lectures and exercises I was deputed as a local to lead the escape committee to the nearest hostelry, where we ruminated on what we had learnt.
	One exercise in particular stays in my memory. We were a disparate group of councillors and planners from all over the country. We were placed into roles and teams to deal with particular scenarios following a nuclear attack on a town—"Anytown", I think it was called. The reality of dealing with problem heaped on problem was immense and most of us realised pretty quickly that we were woefully inadequately prepared to shoulder any sort of responsibility during and after an attack.
	That was 20 years ago. But at least there was some training for local authority members, and there was an implicit recognition—or at least, hope—that many of us would become community advisers. I became so fascinated by this that I got hold of the county manual which set out the duties and responsibilities on such an adviser in times of disaster. I rapidly came to the conclusion that, in fact, I had better keep out of the way; there was a clear line of responsibility and it did not include meddling councillors.
	Today we face a different set of problems, where chemical or biological agents might be the weapon of choice of terrorists, but where the most sinister weapon is already amongst us. That weapon, I would suggest, is fear. We cannot use simplistic shelters like the fortified cupboard under the stairs that we used to advocate. We should, however, use common sense in recognising likely scenarios, some of which can be easily identified, but others need co-ordinated and structured examination by those who deal with emergencies on a day-to-day basis. They need to identify potential risks and also the effects arising from risk.
	Our communities need to know that government departments, local authorities, voluntary organisations, emergency services and relevant sections of the armed services are not only meeting together and creating co-ordinated plans, but are training together and are being given the resources they need to protect the public.
	Look as I might in the Government's new proposals for a civil contingencies Bill, I see no reference to elected representation and so I must assume that we will have to trust our lives to chief executives, chief constables, chief fire officers and such people—just as we have always done.
	I am indebted to my local county council, North Yorkshire, which has sent me a copy of the proposals in the Bill. I note that it is at a very early stage of development, as we have already heard. However, I also know how magnificently the county leaders of the local authorities, police—and I declare an interest as I used to chair the North Yorkshire Police Authority—ambulance service and hospital trusts have worked tirelessly together to organise appropriate responses to emergencies.
	In the past few years we have had our fair share of emergencies in North Yorkshire—terrible floods, a disastrous rail crash and an air crash. I was particularly involved in the aftermath of the air crash, in visiting the major incident room and watching the co-ordination of help, undertaken on this occasion by the police.
	During the Great Heck train disaster, excellent multi-agency ties and arrangements were in place, involving seven police forces, four ambulance services and four fire services. That could only have been achieved by everyone working to the same national standards of multi-agency resolution, underpinned by regular talking and exercising together locally.
	A concern expressed at the time of that disaster, however, was that the role of regional government was an irritation and was not really a helpful channel of advice or support. Duplicate information to that given centrally was required. One participant told me:
	"It was as though they [regional government] wanted a role but didn't know what it was".
	That is clearly stated in the Government's consultative document, which states:
	"The role of the regions, either through Government Offices or any future regional assemblies, has not been clearly established".
	Can the Minister enlighten me as to what he thinks that role might be in the new structure? Can he further assure me that it will not simply be another layer of bureaucracy getting in the way of local determination of emergencies?
	The website provided with national guidance documents—www.ukresilience.org—also has a useful icon link to "terrorism" and appears to have helpful advice to terrorists, such as outlining our response to an attack and offering safety advice. Will the proposed community risk register reiterate these helpful suggestions and will the Minister undertake to look at that website and review it if necessary?
	If we faced a major chemical or biological threat, could we, as a nation, cope? Is anyone checking whether emergency supplies, communications facilities, evacuation procedures or emergency accommodation would be available in the event of a national emergency?
	My final query is about the adequate resources that will be provided to enable those responsible to undertake their duties. My noble friend Lord Roper referred in depth to this concern, although, those resources must do more than create glossy plans, distribute newsletters and organise committee meetings.
	It will take some very expensive, sophisticated equipment to "join up" those who will be in charge of the emergency and who will be formulating and working to the new plans. I know how much it cost our police authority simply to purchase new radios for police officers. Presumably an issue resolution team is looking at this? A lead in time however would be lengthy, and that, too, needs to be taken into account. Also, how will emergency services be compensated for dealing with disproportionate calls on their resources?
	Perhaps the message that I should like to give, however, would be for the Government to get on with the completion of the review and re-issue Dealing with Disaster to reflect any new structure and significantly update its advice in the light of present knowledge of possible threats.
	The management of incidents must be left to local people who are familiar with the geography, location, politics and sensitivities of their communities. By all means offer help and guidance from the centre, either nationally or regionally, but please do not inflict a "task force of experts" on what is already a well-tried and tested response to emergencies. As the Government's consultative document suggests:
	"Where a duty to prepare plans currently exists, the object would be to ensure greater coherence and complementarity between the planning arrangements of different responder organisations rather than to replace the current obligations".
	I could not agree more.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I welcome the introduction of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, on this important debate. There are many interrelated aspects of civil emergencies—terrorism, war, accidents and natural disasters. The way that a government deal with these situations also involves many aspects—the operational, the administrative, the international, the technical, the financial and communication.
	My experience of this was as chief executive of the Meteorological Office, which is involved in many of these issues. I was also chairman of the committee dealing with science and technology aspects of the UK National Co-ordination Committee for the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction on science and technology aspects. Currently, there is a new committee involving many academic and governmental departments. There are also many aspects of research involved in these questions. I shall return to that in a moment. Finally, there is the role of the private sector. I am chairman of a small company that provides software to help government deal with some of these issues. That indicates the range and complexity of the issue.
	The Government's administrative arrangements involve a complex set of plans encompassing central, regional and local government. Ministerial responsibility on committees is necessary to ensure that the arrangements are in place but not of course to act in an actual emergency. It is important to realise that an actual emergency requires an active cell of operational staff. It must be formed as appropriate to the particular emergency. There are arrangements in Whitehall and around the country to deal with that.
	The operation of these active units is based on clear agreements and contracts. Interestingly, there are financial arrangements between the different branches of government underlying these contracts. I can tell noble Lords that that focuses the mind considerably on ensuring that they are efficient.
	Equally, as again noble Lords have pointed out, it is vital that these contractual arrangements are kept alive and operational by considerable exercises. As a recently retired senior official remarked to me before this debate, these exercises are extremely important in ensuring that everyone knows who will be at the end of a telephone during an emergency. The human side of it cannot be overemphasised.
	However, there is a rather British aspect to all this, which was recently discussed on American television, as a friend of mine commented. In Britain we have these exercises but we do not tell everyone about them. Our American colleagues are much impressed by the fact that they are very effective, they are widespread and there is not much publicity. This is one example when British non-communication is much admired.
	What is the record of the UK emergency services? We have heard about the area of Yorkshire and the East Midlands, but it is worth commenting that the emergency services during the IRA bombing campaign worked extraordinarily effectively. But we have been taken by surprise by natural and accidental disasters. The British way—quite rightly—is always to look at these individual events and to learn lessons from them. We had the example of Chernobyl in 1985; the King's Cross fire in 1988; so too were lessons learnt in the Channel Tunnel fire; we had the floods of 1998 and 2000, and lessons are being learnt from those disasters. In addition, a number of lessons learnt earlier have certainly averted potential UK shipping disasters in recent years.
	The point is that technology and planning have played a great role in getting us to where we are and in taking us forward. Therefore, it is important to keep up to date with technology, especially for prediction and communication. A quantitive example is the hugely reduced number of deaths in countries which use technology and which are subject to large natural disasters; for example, hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States.
	With scientific information becoming ever more available, it is even more necessary to have a co-ordinated network of prediction centres. In some countries there is a single centre, such as one sees in Japan. That is not practical in Britain, but a strong network should be part of the arrangements for emergencies.
	Will the Minister reflect in the fact that under the new scheme we must have arrangements that make clearly visible how all the organisations in Britain which contribute to emergency response can do so? How will the Government ensure that all the relevant government agencies are involved? I am afraid to say that they are often ignored—if one is more than three miles from Whitehall, one can be ignored. In other countries, many emergency departments are involved. Some government departments are responsible for nuclear radiation leaving these shores; other departments are responsible for nuclear radiation coming into the country. There are reasons for that, but they must be understood. We need clear arrangements involving non-governmental organisations and the academic community.
	The new role is that of the private sector. The mobile telephone is with us now. Many people—particularly young people—have mobile telephones. Imagine any kind of emergency event with the effect spreading out in a particular direction. What arrangements do the Government have to work with the mobile telephone companies to ensure that everybody can get the necessary information in the most convenient way possible? In the United States, there is a radio service especially for emergencies. In the UK, we have the BBC. All those are arrangements that are extremely important. There are clear targets for how warnings will be issued and in what timescale. In the past, we had an eight-minute warning for a tornado. Now we have a 15-minute warning. That is an example of what is needed. There is much deprecation in this House of targets. They are a painful process for civil servants. However, I believe that they are necessary and that we should have clear targets for a number of those emergencies.
	Finally, it is important to educate the public. Now we ensure that weather forecasts—I was involved in this myself—include flood warnings, and there is a flood helpline. However, there was total confusion recently during an earthquake. I do not know whether we shall experience more earthquakes. Earthquake specialists can never tell whether there will be more. Nevertheless, there was great confusion as to what to do during an earthquake. That is a situation that people need to be told about.
	A colleague at the University of Portsmouth commented to me that when one hears on a weather forecast that there will be winds that will cause structural damage, nobody is told what to do. Are people meant to rush outside and look at their roof tiles? Who do people consult? There is no helpline for that.
	In the United States and a number of other countries schoolchildren are taught about natural disasters. My daughter, when she was in Colorado, was told to climb under the desk during an earthquake. In the UK we received effective door-to-door information during the AIDS campaigns. As other noble Lords have mentioned, I believe that we are in a situation where we need comparable levels of sustained campaigning—individually and through posters on the Underground and buses, and so forth. Those must be co-ordinated with local government, national government and, as I have mentioned already, perhaps with the private sector, such as insurance and communications companies.
	The new dimension is the danger of bio-weapons and bio-terrorism. A clear and well structured warning should be worked out. The UK science in that area is extremely highly regarded. In the past two years there were meetings between the Royal Society and the American and French academies, working out exactly how those processes should happen. The Government can be sure that there is excellent advice available to them.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I thank most warmly the noble Lord, Lord Roper. This might be a short debate, but it is an extremely important one and very timely. The Prime Minister once said that everything changed after the September 11th attack in the United States. I think we would all agree with that. He was right. One area of activity that really should have changed is that of civil protection. We are now in a very different league from before September 11th.
	I declare an interest. I have been approached to become president of the National Council for Civil Protection. No decision has yet been made. My point is that whether or not I do, I declare a personal interest in civil defence matters. Hansard is littered with Questions that I have asked on that subject.
	I first became interested as a county councillor— rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond—in Cambridgeshire back in the nuclear-free-zone days. At that time my county was not a nuclear-free zone but Cambridge city was. That made life very difficult when it came to co-ordinating civil defence and, at that time, wartime defence planning.
	Therefore, I believe that we were one of the first authorities to develop an all-hazards approach. In emergency planning, an emergency is an emergency is an emergency; it does not matter whether it is a wartime or peacetime emergency. Many of the procedures followed and actions taken are the same—whether it is a massive chemical plant explosion, gas leaks, major train crashes, or terrorist or wartime attack.
	As a councillor, and from 1981 leader of my council, together with other councillors and many civil servants—and, again, like the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond—I attended courses at Easingwold. Different councillors went frequently in those days because there was a constant raising of awareness in local government of the importance of emergency planning. Issues of preparedness for disasters were discussed with experts in the field. Initially, I was sceptical, but I found them extremely illuminating and very helpful when it came to working alongside our own emergency planning officers.
	Does that level of training still take place? Do civil servants still go with the same frequency? Do local authorities go for training? I suspect that there is a resource issue there somewhere. During that time, and subsequently when I came to serve in this House, emergency plans were developed and, more importantly, they were physically validated by exercises. I know that in Whitehall there were cross-Whitehall departmental exercises as well to validate emergency plans. When was the last cross-Whitehall full emergency planning exercise undertaken? What lessons were learnt from it?
	Some publicity has been given to a memo that went from government offices to all emergency planning officers around the country. I found it unbelievable—as did many of the emergency planning officers—that they were asked only a matter of four or five weeks ago to tell the Government, through the government offices, whether they had plans in place to deal with large masses of debris or rubble, and so forth. There was no mention of whether it was radioactive debris or toxic debris, but just debris—they were merely asked whether they had plans. The emergency planning officers were also asked whether they had identified disposal routes—presumably landfill sites—that could take large masses of debris. Had they identified contractors that could move the debris? Were there plans in place for mass evacuation from major centres of population? What areas were covered by those plans? Had those plans been reviewed since September 11th last year?
	They are asked only those questions, but those are fundamental basic data that the Government should know anyway. I understand the tailpiece of the memo was to the effect, "Please can we have this information quickly because there is going to be a meeting on 2nd December and the Government would like to know what it was?" I should like to know what were the responses to that memo. I have seen three responses and can say that the common view is that there is a lack of co-ordination, a lack of resources, and a clear lack of overall policy direction from the Government.
	The noble Baroness raised an interesting point when she referred to the role of the regions and the government offices. I have a document. I shall not reveal the source of the document but it is very detailed about this matter. I read from the first paragraph:
	"For this purpose, we [the Government Offices] are bidding for resources which would permit the recruitment of additional staff in the Regional Co-Ordination Unit and GOs and allow them to play an active role in contingency planning, regional preparedness, communications, training and manpower planning".
	What is the role of county planning emergency departments in all this? I now read from another paragraph:
	"The Emergency Planning Review"—
	Which review?
	"uncovered a gap in arrangements between local and central tiers of government. The consultation exercise undertaken as part of the Review pointed to a significant lack of clarity about central government planning as it impacted on the Regions and about roles and responsibilities at a regional level".
	Many of the respondents to the consultation apparently decided that their should be more powers at regional level.
	The final quotation from the document states,
	"An enhanced regional capacity, as part of the national resilience framework, was one of the key recommendations of the Emergency Planning Review. This recommended significantly enhanced co-ordination, planning and responsiveness at regional level. In fulfilling this role we envisage that Government Offices would chair a regional group . . . manage those key relationships communicating between with regional partners . . . provide improved information gathering . . . develop improved contingency planning. We are planning for each GO to have a small team led by a Grade 5 with Grade 7 support, able to work authoritatively with key local partners, bring critical insight to bear in examining the roles and relationships of regional players, exert a strong influence in co-ordinating strategies and plans and represent the centre effectively in the regions".
	We need some answers to that and certainly the county council planning officers will also want some answers. Since the Government came into office in 1997 I have asked endlessly as to who is in charge. We have heard that the Home Secretary, the Minister for London, the police and the Mayor of London each have a role. There are 33 separate emergency services in London.
	I shall repeat one of the questions which was asked by my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith. He asked what was the role in London of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority whose powers are set out in the Civil Defence Act 1948. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that the plans of all the emergency planning officers are being reviewed at the moment. He said that in 2001. Can we be told the outcome of the review, please?
	I mentioned the National Council for Civil Protection. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, mentioned the issue of resources for local authorities. It is a really vexed issue. I believe that a figure of £19 million was mentioned. My understanding is that the Local Government Association believes that nearer £70 million is required. The NCCP said that it was concerned about the timing of information given to local authorities in order that they may plan.
	At a time when the Government claim to recognise the need for effective emergency planning as vital, some local authorities are still going to receive smaller grants than last year. But more importantly, the grant is still being handed out without any clear idea as to what level of funding is necessary. There is so much difficulty at local level. How can one possibly work out what it costs to deliver a service if one does not know what it means? I support the NCCP and the local authorities in saying that there is urgency about revisiting the 1948 Act.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hardy of Wath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, as regards the role of our county planning departments. They are magnificent. In any local emergency they mobilise the voluntary and business communities. I have a great deal of time for them. But they are underresourced and are now very confused as to their role.
	A man called Eric Alley spent 50 years as an emergency planning officer. He was an adviser to the Home Office for three years. He is President Emeritus of the Institute of Civil Defence and Disaster Studies. He says that inadequate preparation, training, co-ordination and direction is evident now. He speaks about inertia in the Cabinet Office. He questions why it is that the United Kingdom is spending less per head of population on civil protection.
	While on this subject I ask this question out of interest. Does the Home Office disaster planning advisory post, which was filled in a most excellent way by Admiral Bawtree, still exist? If it does, who now holds that post?
	Is the National Attack Warning System now in place? We were told in July 1999 by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, in answer to a question from me:
	"We remain committed to the implementation of the final elements of the system in the current financial year".—[Official Report, 20/7/99; col. WA 97.]
	It will be helpful to know whether that has been put in place.
	The Government appear to be in denial about this. Local authorities, the National Council for Civil Protection and experts such as Eric Alley and Members of both Houses are concerned about what is happening. I make one plea. We do not want an emergency planning czar. That would really be a disaster.

Baroness Maddock: My Lords, we have had some very interesting and informative contributions to the debate today. We on these Benches are particularly glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, here, given his important role in this matter. Although he is not speaking I am very pleased that he is here to listen to this debate which we believe is very important.
	We have become very aware of concerns outside the House on this issue held by people throughout Britain. According to opinion polls, people in Britain are much more concerned about these kinds of issues. It is a very long time since the average Briton believed that he or she lived in a dangerous place despite the fact that we lived through IRA terrorism. Even immediately after 11th September it did not always hit home to people.
	But now people are changing their patterns of behaviour. We can see that people are really concerned. There is quite a reduction in the number of tourists coming to Britain. People become a little twitchy about travelling on the Underground. We who live in London some of the time are perhaps not so nervous as people from outside. People become concerned when their children are away. It is important that we try to reassure people as much as we can that we are doing whatever we can.
	There are also specialists. A defence Select Committee report showed a great deal of concern. Concern has been shown by those looking at how the National Health Service is preparing. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, mentioned some of these matters. In recent weeks there have been further worries because of what has happened during the firefighters' strike. People are concerned as to whether we have enough troops to cover for the fire service. Anything might happen: the soldiers may be sent off to war.
	People also remember the worries that they had over Government strategies in the past, particularly when we were trying to deal with other national emergencies such as the foot-and-mouth epidemic. Then we found that trying to co-ordinate events across the country from the centre is very difficult. Many people did not have the right systems in place and certainly did not understand how to procure supplies in an emergency.
	One of the other concerns of those who have a particular interest in this matter is in seeing reports on how we are going to deal with Army reserves and how many we have. They also want to know how we are going to train and equip those available. One of the reports suggested that we had about 500 per region and they receive five or six days' training a year. When people read things like that they are concerned.
	As has been said, we have a problem with information. We do not want to alarm people unnecessarily, but we do want to make people aware of what is happening. In that respect, the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, on non-communication were relevant. It is a difficult area, as the Prime Minister has recognised. We need to take preventive measures, but we do not want to destroy normal life. It is a feature of Britain that during the course of many disasters, during the war and the IRA terrorist problems, we have been very good at not letting them totally destroy our everyday lives.
	Communication can go wrong, as we have seen. One unfortunate instance of that was the information about safety in the Underground that was given out and then changed. That is the kind of thing that does not inspire confidence. We on these Benches believe that the Government were right to put Sir David Omand in charge as senior co-ordinating officer, because we need someone to make effective links across departments. We also need someone to inspire a sense of urgency, given some of the issues that have been raised today. In addition, as many noble Lords have said, we need someone checking to see that we have the funds and the essential equipment.
	We certainly need to co-ordinate levels of preparedness in local authorities. We have heard good contributions about the important role of local authorities. We were all pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hardy of Wath, that all is well in Rotherham. He also made the valid point, at which I saw many heads nodding, that Ministers should be going around the country and looking at what is happening.
	We heard various comments about how civil defence used to be organised, especially from the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond. We all have our little stories on that subject. I remember an occasion in which I was involved not at local government level but when I was still at school aged 17. I wonder how many noble Lords remember the "one in 10 presentation" about what to do in the event of a nuclear war. It had something to do with brown paper and whitewash on windows, which it turns out would not have been a great deal of help if we had been near radiation. We all remember that and, although I am making fun of it, civil defence locally was much more of a priority than it is now. We have heard some good evidence on that subject today.
	Some have called for a whole new bureaucracy to deal with the problem, but I do not think that we should follow along the lines of America. This country is organised in a different way from the United States, which has a much more disparate system. However, in calling for that kind of operation, an important question is raised. Much of the work that we are discussing takes place on the boundaries between the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. As has been said, we need better lines of parliamentary accountability, because people feel that they do not quite have a handle on that. As my noble friend Lord Roper said, we were not sure who would respond to this debate today. That point needs consideration.
	I hope that the Minister will be able to answer the many good questions that have been asked. I have one extra question, relating to the health service, to which few noble Lords referred. I have only just considered the matter, but people in the health service will be important in a major disaster. Particularly with regard to bioterrorism, have we ensured that workers in the health service have had the right inoculations and will still be able to serve as frontline workers in such an event?
	Two key areas that noble Lords have mentioned are legislation and the very slow progress in that regard. It has been stop, start. That point was raised by my noble friends Lord Roper and Lady Harris. On the question of resources, the figure of £19 million was mentioned. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, referred to the sum that the regional offices were hoping they would receive, which seemed to be quite a lot more than £19 million. Will the Minister enlighten us on that matter? The level of support for local authorities is worrying, given what we perceive—rightly, I believe—to be the rundown of civil defence activities in local authorities.
	I hope that the Minister will assure us that the Government have a sense of urgency in helping all the bodies to be prepared. We need reassurance on detailed points. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, raised the issue that I wanted to end on, which is the importance of funds not only to local authorities but to ensure that we have the right equipment, that we can employ people with expertise and that we can carry out tasks effectively when required to do so. I thank everybody for their contribution and look forward to the Minister's reply.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, the subject of the Motion rightly concerns us all, and we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for introducing the debate. The destruction of the twin towers in New York provoked shock in the world, and we were quickly aware that there was a new powerful and ruthless terrorist force with which people throughout the world had to contend. Preceding and subsequent events have shown that the Al'Qaeda network recognises no boundaries and can strike anywhere at any time without warning. We in this country would be foolish to exclude ourselves as a possible target, and we are not being unduly alarmist when we say so.
	Such an attack would result in a dire emergency. That is the kind of emergency on which I shall concentrate. We can imagine that it might be on a large scale and of a kind that we have not experienced before, involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. Those are the very weapons of mass destruction that the United Nations is so anxious to ensure that Iraq does not have in its arsenal.
	Planning against such eventualities is the prime duty of the state and a key line of defence. We are not without experience in this field, as various noble Baronesses have reminded us. We have dealt with terrorist acts and threats of serious destruction before. I recall that during my 15 years in government I attended meetings of the Civil Contingencies Unit on several occasions. They were small and compact meetings of relevant Ministers and civil servants, usually chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister, the late Lord Whitelaw. Decisions taken by the unit were quickly conveyed down the line and implemented by the various authorities concerned. The line of command was clear and effective.
	After the previous election, the Cabinet Office briefing room and the Civil Contingencies Committee, headed by the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary, took over. I was not privy to that process, but that is what I understand happened. What surprises me is the sheer complexity of the new arrangements. The CCC operates at two levels—ministerial and official—and comprises 71 representatives from all interested departments and agencies. I should not have thought that the Whitehall bunker could hold them all.
	Since November last year, three substantial sub-committees have been established—one dealing with the effects of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction; another dealing specifically with London; and the third with the United Kingdom as a whole. The theme of the last two is resilience. The entire organisation is serviced by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which has other responsibilities as well.
	The complexity of the new set-up does not end there, but this is an appropriate point at which to note the comment in the Defence Select Committee's report of July this year that the Government had:
	"confused activity with achievement",
	and that there was a lack of grip and direction. That was the verdict of the Select Committee and it is a Labour-dominated committee. The verdict of Mr Ian Hoult, the general secretary of the Emergency Planning Society, writing in the Guardian on 21st September, was more forthright still.
	"Our emergency planning is a shambles",
	he said.
	The Select Committee was particularly scathing about the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and reported:
	"It is a matter of regret that the CCS was not able to respond more positively and energetically to the events of 11 September. Instead of using its unique position at the heart of Government to lead a strategic response it seems to have become bogged down in the details of the plans of individual departments".
	In their response, the Government stated that the CCS had improved the country's state of readiness by, for example, creating a dedicated co-ordination centre so that there can be a seamless transition under the Home Secretary's chairmanship from the preventative phase of a potential terrorist threat to the management of the consequences of an actual event. Therefore, the Home Secretary will not even have to change chairs between one phase and the next.
	Clearly, the whole business of preventing terrorism has become entwined in the business of dealing with the consequences. That is implicit in the emergency planning strategy, which is based on a logical sequence of assessment, prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. Of course that requires a high degree of co-ordination and co-operation—so much so, indeed, as to make one wonder whether it is achievable and whether it would not be wiser to have some degree of separation and concentration.
	Curiously the Government have recognised that to some extent in the upper echelons of the Civil Service. In June this year, the Prime Minister created a new post of Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator at Permanent Secretary level in the Cabinet Office—a post held by Sir David Omand. We were told that it was being created to enhance the capacity at the centre of government to co-ordinate security, intelligence and consequence management matters. But the interesting point to me is that Sir David takes over certain specific responsibilities from the Cabinet Secretary. That surely implies that a degree of separation and concentration is accepted as necessary within government. I am all for joined-up government but we must be careful to avoid confusion and ensure clarity.
	That was part of the background that led my right honourable friend in the other place, the Shadow Home Secretary, Mr Oliver Letwin, to ask the Prime Minister to consider appointing a senior political figure in overall charge of preparations for any future terrorist attack. I know that my noble friend Lady Blatch fully supports his plea. The Defence Select Committee report had already called for,
	"strong and dedicated political leadership".
	It added:
	"We are not convinced that the Home Secretary, given his many other responsibilities, is best placed to deliver it".
	A separate, dedicated ministerial role was its keynote recommendation, and subsequent events have justified my right honourable friend's call.
	The National Audit Office report on NHS emergency planning in England showed that the NHS was ill-prepared to cope with a terrorist attack or major disaster involving 500 or more casualties or chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Few of us will forget the extreme concern expressed on 20th November by the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Michael Boyce, about the impact on military effectiveness of having 19,000 troops on stand-by for fire-fighting during the recent eight-day strike. We should face the fact that the possibility of war is sufficiently imminent for the Chancellor to have announced last week that he would borrow £1 billion pounds against that eventuality.
	I am sorry that the Conservative Opposition did not receive the wholehearted support of the Liberal Democrats for Oliver Letwin's plea to the Prime Minister. I gather that Mr Simon Hughes dismissed it as a "back-of-an-envelope idea". Perhaps I may point out to the Liberal Democrat Benches in this House that that was surprising considering that the Liberal Party conference at Bournemouth last year passed a motion on defence and security which favoured giving a Cabinet Minister responsibility for all aspects of defence against international terrorism in the UK. Of course, that could be interpreted in different ways, but surely the thrust was towards a concentration of ministerial control and responsibility in line with the Defence Select Committee's unambiguous recommendation.
	Finally, there is the American decision to appoint a heartland Minister. Of course, the United States is different; the federal government must galvanise the States to protect itself. But we, too, have devolved government: Scotland carries a great deal of responsibility in this area through its Parliament—so far as I know, anti-terrorism is not a reserved matter; and Wales has rather less responsibility through the Assembly.
	But we must not forget that the impact of any terrorist attack is local in the first instance and that the local authorities and the three "blue light" services will bear the first brunt. In his reply, will the noble Lord confirm that the effect of the Civil Defence (Grant) Act has been to cut emergency planning resources by 5 per cent in cash terms and 7 per cent in real terms? What has been the cut to local authorities? The Local Government Association claims a 55 per cent cut in civil defence grant in real terms since 1990. No wonder it complains bitterly.
	Reviews have taken place of local authorities' and other services' emergency plans. Various weaknesses have been identified. I am particularly concerned about the communication networks, which may be subject to disruption. Of course, it is vital that command and control centres continue to function. Again, assurances are required. The local authorities are deeply concerned. It is hoped that the Government have ensured that nuclear and other major installations have been secured against attack. The thought of an aerial attack on Sellafield, as outlined in evidence to the Defence Select Committee, would make the bravest of us blanch.
	After the emergency planning review, which I can tell my noble friend Lady Blatch was carried out by the CCS—

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I am very sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but he is four minutes over the agreed time for Front Bench speakers.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, I understood that I would be allowed 10 minutes at least, which was the amount allowed to Back Benchers. We have some time in hand.
	I conclude by saying that the emergency planning review was held by the CCS, and the Defence Select Committee concluded that there was an urgent need to replace the Civil Defence Act 1948, but we have seen no sign of that.
	We all fervently hope that the dreadful events that have been on our minds in this debate never occur, but we must be ever-watchful and fully prepared. I hazard a guess that we are not fully prepared as yet.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken, especially the noble Lord, Lord Roper, who proposed the debate, because it is such an important issue that it benefits from an opportunity for us to consider it. I shall try to speak rapidly to say as much as I can in my limited time.
	First, the noble Lord, Lord Roper, was absolutely right to say that the nature of our perception of threat has gone through a scale shift in the past 12 months. This debate concerns not just terrorism but emergencies such as a cessation of fuel supplies or disasters, natural or otherwise. We are also discussing activities that may occur at a whole range of levels. They can be solely local, across a number of authorities at a regional level or national. In practice, they almost always have an impact locally and can therefore require planning at different levels, which is one of the challenges to the responsible authorities.
	There is clearly an element of prevention involved as well—considering to what extent by improving intelligence one can reduce risk. That is crucial; the Government are putting more resources into it; but no one should be sanguine that that will automatically succeed. That is part of the picture, but I shall say no more on that.
	I turn next to the key questions that I shall address: who is responsible; are they ready and prepared; and what more do we think we need to do? I shall try to keep to that plot as I wind up the debate.
	First, on the question of who is responsible, all that we know about coping with emergencies tells us that clarity of command and responsibility is fundamental. The Government have spent some time considering that during the past 12 months, and the position is clear. At the local level, if there is a disaster or emergency, in the first instance the police are undoubtedly responsible. Let me give a clear, strong example of that. In London, if there is a major incident, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is in charge with a committee, a group, under him consisting of all the other bodies. We must have that clarity of command if we are to deal effectively with the first phase of problems.
	Secondly, as one would expect, the Government have also looked across government to see whether there is clarity of command within government itself. We have considered the structures at the centre. The Home Secretary has the clear leadership role, accountable to the Prime Minister, and under that is a structure of relevant committees considering the issues. Effectively, there are three committees: one considering terrorism risk; one considering how we increase our resilience to cope; and one considering how in practice we would handle a problem as it occurred. I shall not bore your Lordships with the detail or their technical names.
	The second aspect of considering the clarity of command is ensuring that there is a clear statement of which government department will lead on each type of situation. That is clear and precise, and there are also default operations for when there is any doubt. Over and above that, as no doubt noble Lords would tell me, there may be a range of incidents. In such situations, the centre will take clear command and where there is any doubt, the centre will act early and downscale afterwards, rather than acting late and upscaling. In other words, we have learnt from testing during the past few years that it is better, if anything, to go over the top rather than under in terms of pulling the response to the centre and responding powerfully.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and shall be brief. If that is so clear and well understood across Whitehall, why, only one week ago, when I asked who was in charge for the Government as the health spokesman in this House, did I receive the response, "I do not know"?

Lord Filkin: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath is the health spokesman in this House.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Minister whom I asked was Lord Rooker, and he said that he did not know.

Lord Filkin: My Lords, be that as it may, I can only answer that the position is clear. The Government have made sure of that within government, as I sought to explain. That has been reinforced by the appointment of Sir David Omand. He has been given that responsibility by Andrew Turnbull for the best of reasons: to give someone with his weight of experience—of course, he is ultimately accountable within the Civil Service to Andrew Turnbull—the time and attention to focus on the matter as a priority, as he is doing. The reason there is a large number of people potentially on the Civil Contingencies Committee is that government is big. They do not all sit around the table at once but come in at various times as and when there is a need.
	The next issue that we have identified during the past few years is that we are now aware that a disaster could take place not just in the area of an individual local authority. It could easily occur in several local authorities at once or across several local authorities. The Government, through my right honourable friend Nick Raynsford, London local authorities, the Metropolitan Police and others, have expended much effort on considering the arrangements in London—the capital—which is obviously a potential prime target.
	A considerable amount of detailed work has been done to consider how we need to strengthen our preparedness. That has led us to the conclusion that, above all, we need to reinforce the role of the commissioner of police, clarify the local government lead role at chief executive level and recognise that we need robust cross-local government arrangements to deal with potential incidents.
	Our conclusion from that is that we need a strengthening of regional capacity across the country. That is why we are signalling that it is important that, in the first instance, the government offices for the region are strengthened with an additional team capable of giving leadership and testing that capacity.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, shakes her head. But in the first instance, we need capacity within the Civil Service to hold the ring and pull the issues together to ensure that the respective authorities are considering contingency planning and their preparedness to cope with a wide range of civil emergencies at a level wider than that of the individual local authority.
	None of that takes away for a second from the importance of local authorities. The county emergency service is crucial in that respect, but it will not be able to deal with issues that span wider than an individual county, nor would we expect it to do so.
	I turn to the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, which is a good one, about the role of elected members. I think that we have all experienced a local emergency. The key role for elected members, both now and in future, will be to put pressure on the paid executive to ensure that proper preparation and planning are in place, that it is a significant issue on the authority's agenda—whether it is a police authority or a local authority—and that it has proper plans.
	That is not always the case in every local authority. In a fair number, that does not sit on the agenda as a serious issue. That may be surprising—it surprises me—post-September 11th. It is crucial that elected members give leadership on that issue at local authority level and do not accept excuses from officers.
	Let me leave aside the issue of who is responsible, the detailed structure of government and what is happening in London. Time will not allow me to go into more detail. I turn to an equally important question. If responsibilities are clear, as I believe that they are, recognising that such situations may be highly complex, are the authorities prepared? The short answer is: we can never be adequately prepared. But we have certainly raised our perception of the need for a deeper level of preparedness than would have been possible 15 months or so ago.
	The problem is that we cannot predict everything that may happen. As part of horizon scanning and risk assessment, central government, local government and the Police Service must try to make an estimate and think the unthinkable. The big shift since September 11th is that we now know that we ought to prepare for things for which we would not previously have dreamt about preparing. The previously unthinkable is now much more thinkable. So, there is a need for a shift of scale in recognising the potential risks to which we could be exposed.
	Central government is doing a range of things. First, it recognises that we need some form of performance management testing for central government itself, for the emergency services and for local government. In a sense, it is trying to identify the capabilities that ought to be in place in any organisation that has responsibilities in such a situation and test its preparedness by considering whether it has a strong capacity at the centre to respond; whether it has a supply of essential services; whether there is a local response capacity and the capacity to deal with de-contamination and site clearance; whether it has vaccination and treatment facilities; whether it can deal with mass casualties and mass evacuation and identify and detect risks; and whether it has communication capabilities in place. That is the diagnostic against which any organisation should be tested.
	The second stage is that we may need to develop national standards for what we might expect to have in place to test those capabilities. We are considering that. The third element is a process for auditing and testing—be it a central government department, a local authority or a police force—that those standards have been put in place and can be met. In other words, we cannot test for every eventuality, because we do not know every eventuality. We must consider what portfolio of capabilities we might require and seek to have clear standards for what should be there and test it.
	The next element is to get as close to reality testing as possible. Exercises are a crucial part of that process. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, asked when the last cross-government exercise was undertaken: it was "Capital Response", which took place between 18th and 19th October 2002. In addition, the Home Office supports three full-scale live exercises each year. They are held over a weekend and test specific parts of the counter-terrorism plans. There has been a growing trend towards involving the whole range of responding agencies in the exercises to validate the arrangements. Between 600 and 1,000 people take part in those exercises. Over and above that, between 15 and 20 seminar-style exercises are held each year on elements of counter-terrorism.
	In recent years, the following exercises have taken place: a test of a national gas supply shortage; a test of the availability of telecommunications in a crisis; a series of classified contingency plans for responding to a range of terrorist threats, including those that might involve threatened or actual use of CBRN weapons; and tests of command control and communications procedures in the event of a catastrophic incident in London, as I said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. There will be further exercises, but I cannot, given the time, go into detail.
	At one level, we might hope that we would not have to ask local authorities whether they had the capacity to remove rubble or to deal with mass evacuation. However, it was demonstrated that it was necessary to ask that question. There was a mixed response, which will be no surprise. Some such measures seemed to be in place; others did not. That is part of reality testing.
	I was also asked about medical supplies. Time is tight, but I can say that noble Lords will have seen recently in the media that the Department of Health is taking a range of actions, as one of the departments with a lead role in many contingencies. A procurement exercise is under way, which will put in place digital radio communications for the police. That could roll on to the ambulance service, so that we would have intercommunication between the emergency services. The intention is to have a fully manned, equipped and trained reserve reaction force in place by the summer of next year.
	I noted the comment about the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. An enormous amount of good work is being done by the secretariat; that is not a ground for complacency. My judgment—I have spent some time at weekends there—and that of others is that, after testing in the recent fire dispute, it has coped well. There has been the capacity to run things from the centre effectively and well.
	Time is too tight to give all the figures for funding. No local authority has less than it had in the past. Part of the Bill will consider whether we need a new grant system for dealing with civil emergencies. We will consider that, but I cannot believe that any local authority would use the hoary old chestnut that it will not do anything because there is not enough central government grant. Unless a local authority has a guarantee from somewhere that it is in a disaster-free zone, that would be irresponsible.
	What more and what next? In a sense, the civil contingencies Bill is important. We expect to publish it in draft form in the spring. Early in 2003, we will publish an update on Dealing with Disaster, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, asked. The Bill should be the culmination of a process that is already under way. All that it will do is to put in place for anybody who is in any doubt explicit statutory responsibilities for the relevant emergency services and a process for auditing whether they are meeting them. I would expect that any good local authority already does all those things. There is a leadership issue for local authority members and chief executives and the LGA itself. They should not wait for the Bill to tell them to prepare effective plans—by themselves and with others. They should be doing so. It is as plain as the nose on one's face that the world is different from what it was two years ago, and they should act in that context. I cannot cover more. My time is up.
	On some issues, it is impossible to divulge information to Parliament on, for example, terrorist threats. I know that the House recognises that. However, we should not be so shy about whether government—national or local—is prepared to deal with the consequences of a disaster. In other words, there is nothing wrong with parliamentary testing and accountability on such issues; it is part of what we believe in. There may be some doubt about whom to ask. In this House, it is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and I, as the Home Office representatives. In the other place, people should, if in doubt, ask the Home Secretary. He has the overall responsibility. That is, I think, clear. We would not wish questions to be impeded by any doubt—

Lord Elton: My Lords, the time allotted to this debate has elapsed. Does the noble Lord wish to withdraw the Motion?

Lord Roper: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in the debate, particularly the Minister. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Engineers

Lord Oxburgh: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they consider that there will be sufficient well-trained engineers in the future.
	My Lords, my purpose in asking this Question is to draw attention to the importance of engineering to the UK and to the difficulties of keeping the profession supplied with new blood at all levels. I should also declare an interest as chairman of SETNET—the Science, Engineering and Technology Network—the purpose of which is to support schools in the teaching of science, technology and mathematics, in particular by facilitating interactions between employers, professional institutions and schools.
	It is to engineers that we owe much of what we regard as the essentials of modern life—our roads, our telephones, our cars, our domestic appliances and our ability to capture, store, transmit and manipulate data on an unthinkable scale. Without the machines for imaging and analysis, many of the advances on which modern medicine depends would not have been possible. Moreover, it has been said—not purely in jest—that civil engineers have done more for world health than the medical profession, by providing clean water supplies, modern drains and sanitation.
	Be that as it may, it is beyond dispute that such developments have massively reduced mortality and significantly contributed to the massive growth of the world population. The present population is imposing a massive burden on the planet. Even without growth, that burden would increase, as the developing world moved towards the living standards of the developed. But more than that, we can expect population growth of more than 50 per cent over the next 15 to 25 years. This population will need water, food, energy and natural resources. It will also generate wastes that have to be safely managed, the most significant of which are the greenhouse gases. In coping with this we shall be totally dependent on wise policies, founded on scientific understanding and implemented through innovative engineering. That is why a shortage of well-qualified entrants to the engineering profession at all levels is a cause of serious concern.
	This has been recognised anecdotally for years, but it has recently been quantified by Sir Gareth Roberts in his excellent report, SET for Success, on the country's future needs for scientific and educational manpower. Furthermore, a recent survey of SMEs in the UK revealed that for the first time skill shortages had overtaken shortage of finance as the main obstacle to growth.
	Roberts also made a number of proposals as to how the problem might be tackled. It is most welcome that the Government have indicated that they intend to implement the Roberts proposals. This reinforces the continuing efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, in his capacity as Minister for Science and Technology. He has been indefatigable in his support of initiatives to stimulate the interest of young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and to help the engineering profession, sometimes, I might say, in spite of itself.
	Turning to recruitment to the engineering professions, it is important to recognise that the problem is not confined to the UK and is recognised in most parts of the developed world. In contrast, in the developing world engineering is seen as a rung on the ladder to prosperity. In consequence, engineering schools in North American universities and, to a lesser extent, in the UK, are richly populated by very able engineering students from South East Asia.
	There are many sides to the UK problem but I shall confine my remarks today to engineers' preparation at school.
	The disciplines on which engineering largely depends are mathematics and the physical sciences. Every engineer needs at least some knowledge of these and there are difficult concepts to be grasped. Moreover, because the subjects are largely incremental, difficulty with the earlier stages will, more than in many subjects, make later stages totally incomprehensible. Add to that the fact that it is possible to be totally and incontrovertibly wrong, and this amounts to a group of subjects that some may find daunting. These subjects are not easy to teach.
	This underlines the seriousness of the situation described by Roberts—many of those teaching maths and science in our schools are having to teach far outside their areas of special expertise. For example, two-thirds of those teaching physics at key stage 4 do not have a physics degree, and a third of them do not even have an A-level in the subject. Academic qualifications do not guarantee good teaching, but they are certainly a good start.
	Whatever general deterrent factors there may be, they seem to act more strongly on girls than on boys. Boys far outnumber girls in choosing physical sciences and mathematics at school, and even more so in choosing an engineering career after school. It may be that some of the aspects of engineering that are most appealing to young men are distinctly unattractive to young women. Some of the best recognised success stories of British engineering today are the aero-engine and aerospace industry, not to mention world leadership in the design and construction of racing cars. These are outstanding engineering achievements, but the testosterone-rich activities that they support may be a positive turn-off to young women. Showing them that there is more to engineering than this, and convincing them that it is a diverse, interesting and worthwhile profession, must be a priority.
	Of course, whether teachers, career advisers, family or friends advise a pupil to think of a career in engineering science depends to a large extent on their view of engineering and of engineering employers. This is another area where things may go wrong. Schools are busy and under great pressure. This means that there is not much time for anything that does not directly fit the curriculum. Well intended offerings from potential employers and other external bodies that do not fit easily into the syllabus, or which simply appear at the wrong time, are put to one side or perhaps binned. This is a great pity because some of the material has been very carefully prepared and is potentially useful.
	The other potential disaster area is work experience. If the employer plans work experience schemes properly and there is commitment at all levels, they can be a great success—and some are. In other cases, there is commitment at a management level but this is not carried through to the practical level, where the visitor from school is seen as an unwelcome extra burden and may be given little of interest to do or, worse still, nothing at all. Sadly there is clear evidence that some of these schemes are counter-productive.
	That is the bad news. The good news is that all or nearly all of these difficulties can be remedied and, in some cases, action is already underway. On the fundamental problem of mathematics teaching, the Government have already announced an inquiry into post-14 mathematics. The dearth of properly qualified maths and science teachers can ultimately, however, be rectified only by increasing the number of good university graduates and by making the teaching of these subjects in schools a competitively attractive career. However, in the short term, the Roberts' proposal to bring part-time student helpers into classrooms on a regular basis to support teachers may offer some relief.
	The problems of the interface between industry and schools are being tackled by SETNET, supported by charities, employers, professional and scientific institutions and the DTI. SETNET operates both through the web and through 53 regional SETPOINTS. It provides schools with a one-stop shop through which they can find topical and relevant material to support their teaching from local and national industrial sources. It provides news of STEM events and, as of this year, it operates the Science and Engineering Ambassadors scheme under which trained members of outside organisations can visit and work with schools.
	A number of the Roberts recommendations related to the work of SETNET with schools. SETNET responded with implementation proposals that went to the Treasury, DTI and DfES four months ago. Positive replies were received from the Treasury and DTI, but from the DfES there has been, unfortunately, a deafening silence. In view of the department's interest in and responsibilities for STEM work in schools, I find this surprising. I should like to ask the Minister whether the DfES intends to reply and, if so, whether it is interested in implementing the Roberts proposals in so far as they bear on schools.
	In conclusion, we are left with broader and traditional perceptions of engineering. In presenting themselves, I believe that more institutions and employers must consciously go beyond the macho image and give equal emphasis to the humanitarian and socially valuable sides of engineering. Overall, everyone must continue to drive home the message that not only has engineering a major contribution to make to the solution of the problems of both the developed and developing world, but, more important, that no solution is possible without it.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for introducing this important debate. I should declare an interest: I have a Bachelor and a PhD degree in engineering and I am now a professor of climate modelling. Giscard d'Estaing, who was the President of France, trained as an engineer; Wittgenstein became a philosopher. So the first important point to make is that an engineering education is a good basis for life as well as for the utilitarian factors outlined by the noble Lord.
	I have had experience in research and teaching in the United States and on the Continent and have been engaged in the practical engineering and consulting industry in a small company, one of whose senior managers is a woman engineer who was very well educated at Cambridge.
	The Question before us is whether there will be enough well-trained engineers in the future. One can break this down into a question of supply and demand. What is the state of demand in the UK? In this country, the demand for engineers is less prescriptive than in some other countries. Many jobs that are done by engineers in Germany, for example, are done in the UK by people without formal engineering education such as physicists and mathematicians, in much the same way as some excellent people in the City do not have degrees in economics and management but have degrees in mathematics. This broad approach in Britain means that education is very important in the first instance.
	However, we must consider the fact that there is a demand for engineers to deal with important practical problems. One of the most important questions of demand is the size of the engineering and manufacturing industry. Is this in relative decline? There seems to be some evidence that it is, despite some bright spots, from small high-tech companies to large aerospace companies.
	There have been many calls in this House to sustain manufacturing. The Government are taking an intelligent approach, but I am sure that they could do a great deal more to use their purchasing power to help the UK. In my position as chief executive of the Met Office, it was galling to see the UK having considerable purchasing power as regards computers, satellites and so on, but that these were not being used as efficiently or effectively as they might have been.
	Overseas commentators on the UK's engineering and manufacturing industry have referred to the fact that many of our big strengths have declined, and that in some large construction or satellite projects there are simply no UK engineering companies bidding for jobs.
	A further important question in relation to demand is that of salaries. Starting salaries for engineers are much lower than those offered to economists in the City—they are only half or even a third of the amount. I do not know whether the Government can do much about that; but they can encourage companies that employ engineers. That is one of the ways in which the Government should be seeking to support engineering and high-tech industries. Certainly there are bright spots: some small companies pay salaries that people find attractive.
	The next question relates to supply. What affects the supply of engineers? Is engineering fun? Is it challenging? Is it attractive to the best students? Well, of course it is. Students can gain remarkable satisfaction from engineering work early in their career. I worked on a building site in Cardiff and had the interesting experience of talking to a foreman who said to me: "Julian, what are we building here, a watch or a refinery?". So I had an early learning experience in approximation!
	More seriously, there are doubts as to whether people entering the profession meet the correct standards of entry. This point was made strongly by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I refer not only to standards in mathematics, but to people's curiosity and their physical intuition. Are these people the best and the brightest?
	Teaching is very important—the Roberts report is important. But we have to recognise that we share this difficulty with other countries—with the Netherlands and Germany in particular. But by comparison with those countries we should recognise that considerably more women are entering engineering in the UK—not as many as in France or in the Latin countries, but we are doing somewhat better than a number of our competitor countries.
	How can the supply of engineers be increased? One of the most important points is that we need to make engineering exciting. We need to be seen to be dealing with the greatest and most important problems. We should be encouraging the existing centres of engineering excellence, of which there are a number in the UK—for example, Surrey Satellite Technology is a remarkable institution. Based at the University of Surrey, it produces satellites and provides services all over the world. It is probably not well enough known.
	It is notable that, when deciding on a university, students consider factors such as research and approbation. Therefore, we should make a strong connection between the idea of centres of excellence and recruitment into the profession. Perhaps the Government place more emphasis on scientific centres of excellence and not enough on engineering centres of excellence. The Royal Academy of Engineering is conscious of this and has helped with chairs in sustainable development and other areas. But there are a number of areas where the UK seems to be lagging behind and where some big centres would be appropriate.
	Commentators from abroad have said that in some areas of engineering British universities are not as strong as, for example, the major research schools in the United States. What is being done about this? One interesting initiative is the grouping together of departments to form major centres—for example, Cardiff and Bristol in hydrology; the Yorkshire universities; there are some activities in London; and now we see Cambridge and MIT connecting together.
	What else could the Government do to improve engineering in the universities and to make it more exciting and excellent? One of the most important requirements is to break down rigid departmental barriers, to ensure that courses are more imaginative and more inter-disciplinary, to ensure a more international aspect to education, with students spending time in foreign universities.
	It is important for the Government to do more as regards the role of engineering. We have Chief Scientists in many departments; one government department has a chief mathematician. But we do not hear very much about chief engineers. The Ministry of Defence has a Chief Scientist—the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, held the post. I believe that there was a chief engineer in MAFF. We should see more appointments of that kind.
	Furthermore, the Government need to emphasise engineering in their major policy areas. Clearly, when we are reducing pollution, attempting to deal with floods and developing transport, the role and importance of engineering need to be emphasised. That role also needs to be emphasised in bio-engineering. I want to reinforce the point that health is now as much a matter of engineering as it is of medicine. Bio-engineering—for example, micro-chips may even be used in the human body—will probably be the biggest area of engineering in future. We need to emphasise that point.
	My final comments are possibly a departure from the Roberts report, despite a comment that I made to the writers of the report. I believe that universities could do a good deal more to involve the private sector in teaching and research, by means of secondments and so on. The arrangements are still quite stiff for that kind of university/private sector involvement. It would be another important way in which to make engineering seem more attractive.

Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, as an aeronautical engineer, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for introducing this important debate. There is no doubt that we need more young people—girls as well as boys, as all speakers have said—to pursue a career in engineering. All the time one reads of skills shortages, emphasised by employers, and at all levels. That means encouraging the very able to go for chartered status. But chartered engineers need teams of incorporated and engineering technicians to work with them.
	One reads in the financial columns of impending recession. If we are to export successfully in world markets, we need the innovation of world-class engineers to improve productivity and efficiency in manufacturing without destroying quality. We have to compete on price and build sustainability into the equation as well. It is not an easy task.
	At the same time we need to improve our health service. That will need engineering innovation, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, to use surgical and medical skills more efficiently to the benefit of patients—keyhole surgery, radiotherapy, prosthesis and aids for the handicapped. The IT system in hospitals and pathology labs needs to be compatible with that of GPs if endless time is not to be wasted in outdated communication. That is a challenge in itself.
	All the goods that we buy or use—white goods, clothes, food, transport, bridges, roads—again depend on engineers for their production.
	We need to encourage more young people to succeed in maths and science and see how exciting and rewarding it is to exercise those skills to overcome problems in their employment. Pay is reasonable. Every engineer can carry a chief executive's baton in his or her future knapsack. There are about as many engineers as accountants as chief executives in the FTSE 100 companies. And of 43,000 directors of manufacturing companies more than 10,000 are engineers. Unemployment is very low.
	Why do not more young people choose engineering careers? It is partly because it is not a school subject. So there are precious few teachers to market it. At the same time, there is a shortage of good maths and physics teachers to make their subjects exciting, attractive and fun. That problem needs long-term emphasis for its solution. Lord Dainton told the House that 30 years ago. I wish SETNET well in tackling the problem. The Association for Science Education is doing a very good job.
	On careers advice, the CRAC/NICEC report Choosing Science at 16, backed by the Engineering Employers Federation, EMTA and the Department for Education and Skills, states:
	"The majority of the careers advisers were graduates with humanities and social science backgrounds. One in ten had science degrees, all in biological subjects—in the whole review there were two engineers, no graduates in maths or physical science".
	That serious situation needs to be addressed urgently.
	The Government's Ambassadors scheme is good. We need young and enthusiastic engineers who are prepared to go into schools to describe the excitement and rewards of their chosen profession. That will not happen by magic. The young engineers who would do that best are probably at the most demanding time in their careers and at home with young families needing their attention. There is no doubt that giving interesting presentations to schools helps to develop young engineers' marketing skills. Employers need to recognise that by making it easy for staff to have time off. In the longer term, the firm will benefit in this way and in recruitment from the next generation. I am patron of the WISE campaign, Women Into Science and Engineering. We have given the Ambassador scheme our database of young women engineers prepared to speak in schools.
	It would also be a good idea to recruit careers advisers from suitably qualified young women who are bringing up their families but are prepared to work part time. All schoolteachers and careers advisers should value middle-ability children more highly, especially those with practical skills. In these days of league tables and targets, too often they are undervalued. Yet they will provide the skills base of the teams I referred to earlier, led by chartered engineers. Very often they will find more suitable education paths in post-16 further education, but clear encouragement needs to be given. Modern apprenticeships in engineering provide a good path. But, once again, far more encouragement needs to be given to girls. We have reached 15 per cent of women undergraduates in engineering, but only 2 per cent in modern apprenticeships, yet girls form over 50 per cent of the population. What a waste of potential skills.
	WISE is held back from its excellent work by lack of money. The WISE buses are coming off the road next July having given literally hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls practical experience in using mechanical and electronic equipment on board the buses. We have been running WISE Outlook three-day programmes in FE colleges for 13 to 14 year-old girls, where, once again, they have hands-on experience of work in engineering and meeting women engineer role models to encourage them to enter the field at technician level. These have been financed by DTI until September when funding will be stopped. Such successful flagship projects backed by FE colleges and engineering employers need continuing finance. I hope that at the end of this debate we shall receive assurance that serious consideration will be given to their resumption. We are talking about small amounts of money—tens of thousands—compared with the Government's plans for spending millions in other fields.
	Engineering skills, whether among males or females, are vital to UK Limited. I hope the Government will set their mind to a long, firm, practical campaign with money behind it for encouragement.

Lord Methuen: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for raising this very significant matter. The recent poll on great Britons shows that people are not unaware of the contributions made by British scientists and engineers. Brunel, Newton and Darwin all did well in the poll. But we must understand why young people are not coming forward to be trained as engineers and scientists.
	I was lucky as a child because I knew I wished to be an engineer by the time I was eight or nine, and I had the support and encouragement of my parents to become one. People seem to think that engineering is dull and boring, but I seldom found that so during some 40 years of industrial experience. Perhaps I was lucky, because I had the privilege of working, among others, for two first-class companies, IBM and Rolls-Royce, in which engineers were valued and exploited.
	There is a big cultural issue here. Engineers in this country simply do not have the status that they have, for instance, in Germany or France. Nor do we yet have some of the eye-catching successes such as the French TGV high-speed trains and other European achievements. Perhaps that is due to the status of the title "engineer" being degraded over the years. Anyone wielding a spanner, without any qualifications, seems to call himself an engineer. By contrast, on the Continent the title is always used in addressing people, thus emphasising the status of his profession. I was often told off by my Austrian in-laws if I did not address them as "Magister" in recognition of their qualifications.
	There are also salary implications. Engineering is seen as a poorly paid profession, lacking in status compared with the medical, accountancy and legal professions. Why is this? I believe this begins at the earliest stages of our education in the toys we play with and in our earliest schooling. Most of my generation was brought up on Meccano, a brilliant method of training and inspiring any budding engineer in the creation of structures and machines. There is nothing in our shops today, I suggest, that encourages a child in such a creative manner.
	How many of our teachers, at all stages, have any experience of the world of engineering or the practical skills that go with it? Previous speakers made that point also. It would be beneficial to recruit mature people into our schools, perhaps on a part-time basis, who have industrial experience and who can inspire our children with what can be achieved as an engineer. There are salary implications, but those should not be insuperable.
	The situation in our universities is also critical. Home student applications for civil engineering courses are down by some 50 per cent and there are some 30,000 vacancies on science and engineering courses. Many graduates choose not to take up engineering but become management consultants or enter other professions where they see better salaries and job prospects. Entry salaries in the engineering profession may be less than that of a police recruit, emphasising the low regard in which engineers are held.
	Part of the problem is not only the undervaluing of teachers in general but the lack of mathematics and science schoolteachers, as pointed out earlier. Pupils opt for A-level courses in arts subjects, which they consider more interesting and less difficult. The Government should be encouraged to support the adjustment of salary scales to ensure adequate remuneration of teachers in those subjects.
	At undergraduate level, we need to take more account of the benefits of vocational and sandwich courses and subsequent apprenticeships. I benefited personally from a sandwich course having always been a very practical person. The mixture of coursework and industrial experience is an invaluable part of any engineering training. The Government should also consider the implications of top-up fees for engineering and science university courses. Fees will be yet another disincentive to students contemplating those courses. Universities in turn need to train the next generation of research leaders and lecturers to fill existing gaps.
	I await with interest the Minister's response. What Brunel achieved 150 years ago, we can still achieve in this era—from the civil engineering works on the Channel Tunnel rail link to the highly successful achievements of our trail-blazing microelectronic firms.

Lord Haskel: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, asks an important Question and I congratulate him on asking it. He also reminded us that small and medium-sized enterprises are now more concerned about skill shortages than about finance.
	What is it about the way we run our businesses that has caused this shortage of well-trained engineers? In recent times, I have put it down, in a word, to sub-contracting—"outsourcing", to use the current jargon. By outsourcing to smaller firms, one also sub-contracts the need to train. There are of course great advantages to sub-contracting work to specialist and skilled sub-contractors. It keeps costs and overheads down. British industry has become very skilled at that, and it is very highly valued. The financial markets sometimes value that skill more highly than ability to do the job itself, especially where the supply chain is well run.
	Like all good ideas, however, it can be carried too far. The building and construction industry is a good example of where this has happened. Engineering work is now often sub-contracted down to individuals or to small groups of individuals that are so small or operate on such low overheads that they cannot undertake any training of new engineers—it is all they can do to keep up their own training. That is why there is such a shortage of plumbing engineers and electrical engineers. This is happening to small companies in many sectors of business and industry.
	Let us consider the railways. We have been told that recent accidents have occurred because of poor engineering. The cause of this poor engineering is that Railtrack's sub-contractors and its sub-contractors' sub-contractors just did not have enough well-trained engineers. In an interview in today's Financial Times, the chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority implied that that was one reason why major projects for the railways are threatened.
	So what can the Minister do about it? He certainly cannot change the culture of British industry. What he can do is encourage the organisations that fill the gap created by this outsourcing culture. These small sub-contracting firms employ very few graduate engineers. Most of their engineers have to be trained within the business itself, and that is where the training and the professional organisations play such a crucial role.
	I am speaking of organisations such as EMTA, the Engineering Marine and Training Authority. In its work on the new sector skills councils, it plays an important role in enabling and encouraging those firms to run engineering modern apprenticeship programmes. Other noble Lords have spoken of the need to attract young people. They do attract them. Thanks to EMTA, engineering is still top of the league for the number of people registering to do modern engineering programmes and has the highest completion rate. Yet there is a decline in the number of people starting engineering modern apprenticeships. That must be a cause for concern.
	Is it because there is less status in vocational training than in academic training? Perhaps it is. So we must seek to draw well-trained engineers of the future by attracting able young people from all sectors of society. That is why I think that we must give equal esteem to academic and vocational training. NVQs, Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas as well as academic qualifications should all be equal as part of the advanced modern apprenticeships.
	Even in the smaller firms, well-trained engineers have to be up-to-date engineers. They have to develop with the job. It is in keeping their members up to date that the professional organisations have an important role. I know that the Society of Operations Engineers—I declare an interest as its patron; it is a professional organisation which is part of the Engineering and Technology Council—is addressing this issue by developing a professional development record for its members. Members will be required to show evidence of continuing professional development on an annual basis. The society provides a database of courses and seminars, both within and outside the society, which might count towards that requirement. It is a society of 25,000 members.
	The culture of outsourcing seems to have been successful in terms of profitability, but less so in terms of productivity. It seems that we are as profitable as most other economies in the OECD but somewhat less productive, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, told us. However, increasing productivity is not only a matter of good engineering; it is also a matter of management. All employers, large and small, need engineers with these management skills. Good management is not just a matter of being nice to people; it means building up the human capital by measures such as sharing information, encouraging personal development, and—perhaps above all—introducing the five main lean techniques which are known to raise productivity. That is why successful organisations and companies provide their engineers with opportunities for personal development as well as training in new engineering.
	It also seems to me that another new skill is emerging which well-trained engineers have to acquire, particularly in larger companies—the skill of exercising personal judgment on where to draw the line between loyalty to the company and loyalty to society. In recent months, we have had a number of corporate scandals, and from these we have learned that in some companies there is a savage peer review process. It is savage in order to instil fear into those who might otherwise have challenged the integrity of the business. That gives every incentive in a company to cover up bad news.
	It seems to me that well-trained engineers in the future will have to be provided with the confidence to see things through their own eyes rather than through the eyes of their masters. Well-trained engineers will need to learn that ethical behaviour is economically productive, and that shedding your reputation may temporarily increase your bank balance but is bad for your career. I think that that is another important task for the engineers' professional organisations.
	In time, the outsourcing culture will change; some say that the pendulum is already beginning to swing back. Meanwhile, however, in the vocational sector we are dependent on the training organisations for teaching engineering and management and on the professional organisations to continue this work by keeping engineering knowledge up to date and personal skills up to scratch. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will promise them his support in this work.

Lord Freeman: My Lords, although I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, I was not impressed by the argument that, on balance, the principle of outsourcing has had a detrimental effect on the quality of the training and skills of engineers. As the Scots would say, I think that his case is not proven.
	I agree with much else of what the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, particularly his welcome for the decision of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, to initiate this debate. I am sure that all noble Lords will welcome this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, may be interested to know that, on making inquiries on precedents, I was unable to find a previous debate on this subject within living memory. That may be a commentary on the importance placed on the subject.
	I declare an interest. Although I am not an engineer, I am a chairman of an engineering company which employs 4,000 engineers. I therefore speak not only from my own limited practical experience but from the experience of my colleagues.
	It is important to reflect on the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh: will there be enough well-trained engineers in this country in the future? The answer may be yes in terms of the total number of engineers. However, I do not think that we should be confident about the quality of engineers unless certain steps are taken not only by the Government but by the profession as a whole.
	I agree with what the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Methuen, had to say in describing the fall in the status of the engineering profession. Perhaps since the second world war or the mid 1950s, it has gradually eroded, especially compared with Germany and France. There seems to be a growing failure to recruit the brightest and the best of our schoolchildren and even the university students who are studying engineering to stay in the profession. That is very sad.
	I am told that in some cases, our universities are accepting even C and D grades at A-level to attract students into engineering, which cannot be good in terms of quality graduates. Media studies, law, in particular, and investment banking as careers seem to have been more attractive in the past two or three decades than engineering. It may be that the crisis in the investment banking industry is one of the best things that has happened to the structure of our economy in terms of shaking out some of the brightest and best who may have been attracted in the past to enter other, perhaps more productive, sectors of the economy.
	I have four suggestions, which are all very brief, but before I turn to them, we should recognise that there has been a change in the demand for the type of engineers in our economy in the past 30 to 40 years. We have moved from a situation where the great need was for mechanical engineers and technicians through to the use of computer-aided design, to cite one example. Now the emphasis is on engineers who are skilled in computer sciences and electronics, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, mentioned in her contribution. Indeed, I was so enthused by it that I shall go straight home after the debate to encourage our teenage daughter to reconsider her future career prospects. There has been a change in the mix of skills required in the profession. There is now much greater emphasis on multi-disciplinary and commercial skills.
	My first suggestion relates to university funding. This is a major problem across a number of disciplines, but particularly for engineering. It is a four-year course and is expensive in terms of qualified teaching staff. I was appalled to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and others said about the lack of qualifications of some of our teaching staff, not only in universities but in schools. We should encourage our corporations and businesses in this country to support engineering students directly, perhaps through bursaries and scholarships. I use the example of the Armed Forces, which has excellent schemes, whereby it pays or supplements the pay of students in return for them agreeing to serve for a certain period in the Armed Forces. There is no reason why our great engineering companies should not provide specific additional support in return for service later.
	I shall not repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, said about attracting more girls into the profession. Her words were full of wisdom. My second point relates to parents and teachers. It is often their lack of encouragement to schoolchildren about entering the engineering profession that is at fault. I suggest that the industry should make the specific effort of showing parents and teachers what engineering companies in our modern society are all about. I found it helpful in my constituency when I served in another place to show that they are not just about metal bashing, but are one of the most exciting parts of our economy. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, at SETNET, and to the Arkwright scholarship scheme. We should have 10 times the number of Arkwright scholars in our schools rather than the limited number of 150.
	Thirdly, we should be teaching our engineers more broadly at university. They need to know about risk management, financial planning control, marketing and project management. There have been some disasters for which previous Administrations and previous Ministers, including myself, must take some of the blame. Disasters such as the Jubilee line and the West Coast Main Line makes one wonder whether, had the engineers in charge had broader training, education and experience, some of the problems of cost overrun and engineering faults might not have occurred.
	Finally, we need to bring more engineers into the heart of government, both national and local. If the Deputy Prime Minister reads this debate, he will see that I am suggesting that he should have a senior engineer in his department. We have lost city engineers from local government. They should be replicated. We need more engineers on advisory bodies, especially in the Civil Service. We must give our engineers a much higher status. By doing so, we shall meet our recruitment targets.

Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I am happy to take part in this debate. As Members of your Lordships' House will know, I am a chartered engineer, a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and I have dabbled in a number of other engineering societies. I was an engineering journalist for a long time; I still am. I have published engineering books. I was a member of the Finniston committee into engineering 20 years ago.
	I shall say something about the living memory of the previous speaker. I raised this subject, or something like it, 10 or 12 years ago from the other side of the House. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, as he managed to attract more speakers than I did. The impact of my contribution of 10 or 12 years ago has not impinged on the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, as yet. We have said very much the same tonight as we said then. Very little has changed.
	I shall be brief. We are supposed to have eight minutes, and I see that we have quite some time left. I shall say a little about higher education. I was pleased, in a way, at the tribulations regarding A-levels recently. I know that that is unkind, but I have never regarded A-levels as the golden whatever. The impetus that the problems with A-levels gave to considering taking up the international baccalaureate seemed to me quite a good idea. However, there is an easier way to go about the matter, which would be less chauvinistic, I suppose.
	Some noble Lords may have heard of the Scottish higher leaving certificate, which is an excellent way into higher education. It has produced a substantial number of reasonably successful, though not always magnificent engineers. The English should take up something like the Scottish higher leaving certificate, tweak it in whatever way they feel appropriate and call it the English baccalaureate, or something of that nature. Honour would then be satisfied on all sides.
	I scribbled down my next point while others were speaking, which I am now trying to read. There is a duty on the profession. I speak as someone who has had a career in consulting engineering in the construction industry, so I shall not bother too much with mechanical engineering, and so on, important though those things are. I shall stick to the area about which I know a little.
	There is a tendency to expect things to be done for the profession. But the profession must do things for itself. The first and most important thing it must do is to pay engineers more. To do that employers should charge higher rates. Noble Lords will have noticed that in recent years a profession has grown up which is very popular. Its leading members—now that "my lads" are in power—are invited to Downing Street. I refer to the design profession, a new profession that charges a lot of money and achieves its purpose very well.
	At this point I shall irritate the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. She will remember that some years ago she and I had lengthy conversations about compulsory competitive tendering—I forget who was the Prime Minister at the time but the Conservative Party was in power—whereby design engineers, that is, consulting engineers, were obliged to compete with each other for commissions. That was always wrong. The noble Baroness will remember that we had those entertaining discussions over several weeks. She won partly because of her superior debating powers and partly because she had more people on her side than I had on mine. However, competing for commissions was a grave error.
	The cost of design, particularly in construction, constitutes a tiny part of the whole life cost of the project. I do not know how "my chaps" have reacted to the matter of competing for commissions as I do not follow such matters terribly closely. The noble Lord, Lord Methuen, spoke of Brunel who has been in the news lately. When Isambard Kingdom Brunel was—I almost said "touting"—hoping to get the commission to design the Great Western railway and he came up against the directors of the board who were putting up the money, he told them, "I shall not give you the cheapest railway line. I shall give you the best railway line". That is exactly how the client should expect his consulting engineer and designer to approach a project. The client should not ask for the cheapest design but rather the best. The best design will be more expensive but the engineers involved will be paid an appropriate sum.
	Finally, I agree with almost everything that has been said on all sides of the House, even as regards comments with which I do not normally agree. The status of engineers was mentioned. I have been involved with the Institution of Civil Engineers for more than 40 years. We babble on about status and so on. I have always advised engineers to do one thing—it was done by the members of the design profession whom I have mentioned—and that is to blow their own trumpets. Engineers should not expect to be recognised for what they produce or the marvels that they achieve or for the fact that they are the most important people on earth. They should blow their own trumpets and tell people what they achieve.
	That brings me to my very last point which I shall recount as quickly as I can. I note that the Whip in the person of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, is starting to squirm, as it were, but I shall let her squirm for a moment or two longer. One of the better things that the party opposite produced while in power was the copyright Act of 1988 which introduced the moral right for an architect to be recognised from the start as the designer of a building. In the course of our debates we decided that that right should belong to people other than the relevant architect as, especially in the case of modern buildings, the role of the engineer is at least as significant as that of the architect and sometimes more so. It was agreed that both architects and engineers should have the moral right to be recognised in the way that I have described. Unfortunately, Whitehall being what it is, it could not accept the notion that the then Bill should be amended to include the phrase "architect and/or engineer". However, it accepted a reference to the author of the building or structure. That, of course, confused the issue. Engineers have not really noticed that omission and have not blown their own trumpets in that regard.
	I am aware that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, who will reply to this debate is not in any way to blame for that situation. However, I believe that that matter should be clarified and that the copyright Act should be amended to make it clear that architects and engineers both have the moral right I have mentioned. There are two ways of doing that, either by the Government—

Baroness Andrews: My Lords—

Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I am about to conclude. My noble friend should not get excited. If she will subside, I shall finish directly. All she has achieved is to prolong my remarks further. As I say, the measure can be amended either by the Government or by the Government assisting a parliamentarian to produce a Private Member's Bill.

Lord Addington: My Lords, I have the feeling that I should provide duelling implements for the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon.
	The main point that has emerged in the debate is that a cultural problem exists with regard to engineering. It is no longer considered a sexy subject. My education was solidly arts based. When choosing subjects in which to specialise the brilliant and confident students made their choices confidently. The rest tried to pick subjects that they considered safe and secure. Engineering does not have an attractive image and is not considered a vitally important subject.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, started with a historical fact. Civil engineers have certainly saved far more lives than the medical profession. Prevention is better than cure. When we gave ourselves clean water and clean air we stopped many of the great Victorian killers and the killers of the industrialised world. That is an unequivocal fact; one of the few that history provides.
	So why do engineers have such a bad image? The short answer is that I do not know. It might be to do with the fact that we seem to worship the nice, safe professions such as law and medicine. There is definitely a cultural gap that we are not addressing.
	The practical problems of recruiting maths and physics graduates to teach, especially at GCSE level, have been pointed out. As my noble friend, Lord Methuen, said, we should look at the people who have worked in this subject, who are in the present types of industrial practice—on which there has been much comment—and who may find themselves not regularly employed and getting by as consultants when they hit their mid-forties to early fifties. We should ask those people whether they would like to teach again.
	There was a precedent after the Second World War, when we encouraged many people rapidly back into teaching by providing access courses. Some attention has been paid to this matter over the past few years, but we should drive hard into that area to get people back into the subject.
	If we are worried about engineers, I would suggest that someone who enthuses about the practical benefit of a subject, which seemed to me as someone who did not like it a series of incomprehensible squiggles on the blackboard, might be a way of making the subject more real. Recruiting maths teachers who have been engineers first and who will say that you can do something worthwhile and practical with the subject might be a way of crossing the cultural divide. We must draw attention to that strategy.
	It has been said on several occasions that the problem does not exist only at the higher levels of engineering. We must also consider plumbing engineers. Such professions suffer from the fact that the skills involved are not seen as status qualifications. I suggest that we look at our universities and the nature of degrees and try to bring the HND level qualifications more into the university structure. Possibly we should re-market and repackage them. Their "sandwich" nature often gives people a better chance of subsidising their income through university. In the current environment that is a bonus. We should put them into the degree structure as a stopping-off point; a point at which you can leave if you decide you are of a more practical bent. The qualifications could then be topped-up to degree or post-degree level; that is a more practical way forward.
	Undergraduate life is changing: there is less funding and the old A-level system seems to be grinding to a halt, as is the idea of banging students through an intensive three-year course. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howie. I thought that I would be the first person to mention the higher system. I came across it at university in Aberdeen. It struck me that under it people had a much wider choice. The degree is longer, but it was good that we did not have the great god of A-levels to prime students for three years rapidly through their degrees.
	If the A-level system is coming to the end of its natural life—as I suggest it may be—then the noble Lord, Lord Howie, is right: it would be easy to go towards a baccalaureate-type system. If we cannot go towards a baccalaureate-type system it would certainly be a staging post towards it. If it shows us the way towards that ultimate goal, I hope that we will consider it carefully.
	I have come to the conclusion, especially during the debate, that we have a cultural problem. The industry can deal with it to an extent, as has been said, but the Government will have to try to market these courses aggressively. Ultimately we need them; if you are dealing with the physical world in a practical way, surely you will have better employment prospects than by studying laws that may change or business practices that may become out of date almost as soon as the textbook is printed. Therefore, I suggest that when dealing with the physical world one's future might be on a slightly safer foundation if one did not consider these subjects according to the latest fashion, but rather in terms of business management or indeed the arts-based approach.

Baroness Blatch: My Lords, this has been another short but equally important debate this afternoon. I am pleased to be taking part in it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, most warmly for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue.
	I make a confession: while growing up I have said to a number of people that if ever I am reincarnated I want to come back as an engineer. I have always thought—yes, I missed my opportunity—that the excitement of thinking about something, designing, making and using it attracts me very much. If someone such as my noble friend Lady Platt had been around when I was a little girl, it is just possible that I might have actually become one.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, reminded us of how important the engineer is to our well-being as a nation and indeed to the world. We have the problems of success because we live longer, are healthier and have every kind of aid to help us through life. We now look to the engineer to resolve the other problem—the problem of population growth. It will be the engineer who will find some of the answers to those questions.
	There is a concern among engineers—mentioned by a number of noble Lords—about the casual use of the word "engineer". We have the man who mends the washing machine, fixes the lift or mends the electric kettle being called an engineer alongside the great professional engineers. That is a real issue. Some progress has been made on that. Some form of registration scheme through the professional bodies is another way forward.
	The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and others have mentioned the difficulty of the subjects that are key to engineering—maths and physical sciences. The truth is that, in commonly used jargon, they are known as the "hard" subjects. Not everyone makes the hard choices. The noble Lord said that they are not easy to teach. For students and pupils they are not easy to learn. So there is an issue here. That is why my noble friend Lady Platt is absolutely right: there needs to be a great deal of encouragement at every level of education in order to persuade children to think about the subject.
	One problem is the quality of the teachers. That is not to denigrate teachers, but the truth is that we have many teachers teaching science, and in particular teaching maths, who do not have a science or a maths qualification. Others do not have a very good maths or science qualification; and we have an unprecedentedly large number of teachers teaching subjects for which they were not trained. That is bound to have an effect on the quality of the teaching—and of the learning.
	Much has been said about boys versus girls. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Platt. She has done more than anyone I know to promote engineering as a profession—but to promote it for women. Her work with WISE is legendary. I also want to join with her in her campaign to have WISE's grant reinstated. It has been incredibly valuable as a service that persuades young girls into engineering. My noble friend has an aeronautical engineering degree. She achieved that when not all that many women went to university, let alone managed a degree in aeronautical engineering. So many congratulations to my noble friend.
	The noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon, mentioned Monty Finiston. I happen also to be a fan of his. It was Monty Finiston who introduced an educational movement called Education for Capability. His idea was that every schoolchild, from whatever level of ability and at whatever age, should have the experience of thinking about a problem, trying to decide what to do about it and making something—by making and doing—using and evaluating it, thereby going through all the processes that one would go through in engineering. I think that we have rather forgotten that very practical applied approach to learning. Certainly he is much remembered for it.
	Concern has been raised about standards. That is a problem. We have heard and seen the statistics produced today that at key stage 2 standards in science have fallen. In 95 local education authorities they have fallen. They rose in only 25 local education authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, mentioned the disappointing news that the uptake of modern apprenticeships, particularly in engineering, has fallen by 20 per cent. The take-up of modern apprenticeships has fallen in every single part of the country except in the North East, where there was a small rise.
	I should like to add a word about careers advice. I believe that we make a terrible mistake with careers advice. People go into schools when the pupils are 14, 15 or 16 and talk to them about careers and what they should be doing. Effective careers advice should start in infant schools. Engineers and people in the professions should go into schools and talk to very young children. It is at that stage that children would be enthused. They will then understand the importance of particular subjects and the importance of working hard.
	That should be reinforced as the child goes through school. Careers advice should start very early and be reinforced before the child leaves junior school and arrives in secondary school. It should not be left until the child is 14 or 15 to tell him that it would be exciting to be an engineer if, frankly, he was awful at maths and had not tried very hard. I believe that much more could be done; namely, starting earlier with careers advice.
	More people from industry should visit schools and schools should take pupils out into industry. That should be encouraged more. I agree with my noble friend Lord Freeman on his point about parents. There should be an interaction with parents. Why should not professionals also come to parents' evenings to talk about the kind of careers open to their children if only they studied particular subjects?
	The noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon, said that nothing has changed since the time he introduced this very debate on this side of the House making the very same point. What has changed, which is welcome and is being built on by the Government, is that science is taught now at a very early age. It is part of the national curriculum for infant and junior schools, and that has helped. Maths, science and technology are now part of the national curriculum for all children.
	I make one plea to the Government: there is an enormous amount of top-slicing of budget, which I am afraid supports many centrally controlled fanciful projects, and the core funding into schools is being depleted all the time. We need more of the core funding put back into schools so that they can do something about improving the services given to our children. The key is obvious: better qualified maths and science teachers.
	Another point I feel particularly strongly about is that there should be more teaching of subjects in primary schools by subject specialist teachers. It is too much to expect one teacher to teach one class for a whole year, covering eight, nine or even 10 subjects. I believe that for subjects such as maths, science and technology there should be much more moving about of the children and the strength of each teacher used to teach across the age range. There should also be a better transfer of children from junior to secondary schools. I know of too many bright children who leave junior school and coast during their first year in secondary school. Often, they are lost for ever.
	I have said that careers advice could be better and more effective. Unless some of those changes take place—we have heard suggestions from all sides of the House today—sadly, the answer to the Question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, will be no. We all hope that that is not the case, but the point I take from my noble friend Lord Freeman is that it is more important to consider the quality of the engineers than the number.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. I am the father of two engineers. I therefore counsel the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, that he will do a good job if he succeeds in inculcating such values in his daughter. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, that perhaps I did not start too early. My incompetence with the screwdriver was noticeable to my children at the age of five and that may have been the reason why they began to take a keen interest in engineering skills.
	I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for introducing a most significant topic for debate. I, too, want to put on record his significant work as chairman of SETNET, the Science, Engineering and Technology Network. Its activities are a key part of the strategy for meeting our future engineering requirements. They are especially welcome in their contribution to improving the links between industry and our education institutions and in helping to enhance teaching capacity.
	I recognise the anxieties expressed about the position confronting engineering. Complaints about engineering and the problems of our culture go back at least 150 years. Even in the great days of Brunel and the 19th century engineers, there was still a great anxiety about the fact that a true education cultivated the arts rather than the sciences. There were great worries about our manufacturing base at that time. Therefore, I believe that at times we can overstress the extent to which cultural factors operate against the successful development of engineering skills. We play our part as a significant economy in the world and as a significant manufacturing economy of the world over a long period of time.
	We recognise that certain aspects as regards culture and education can take hold. It is necessary that we adopt strategies which counteract the perspective that certain subjects are easier to conquer intellectually and in which subsequently it is easier to make one's living in our uncertain society.
	None of us underestimates the sensitivity of young students and potential undergraduates to the market. One of the things that broader and certainly higher education and the students whom they educate is noted for is the quite significant responses to market sensitivity—where the jobs are, where the courses are created, and where the students graduate. Therefore, if we are going to change the position as regards engineering we need to make a very significant contribution in terms of the perspective of our education institutions.
	I seek to establish as best I can today the extent to which the Government take this issue on board and recognise the useful ways in which government policy in education and in support for industry and co-operation with industry can help to improve the engineering base of our country and sustain and advance its skills.
	Perhaps I may emphasise in this connection that all is not gloom. For example, it is the case that the numbers of students going into certain areas of education are increasing quite significantly. The particular area in which the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, has such high renown is aeronautical engineering. It has seen a substantial increase in the number of students in recent years. The numbers have increased by 49 per cent. The number of students in electronic engineering has also increased by 32 per cent.
	There are declines in certain areas. Reference was made in the debate to civil engineering where there has been a significant decline. We know that is one of the areas which is most sensitive to the economy, not least because a great deal of its work relates to the public economy, with investment in major projects. Therefore, civil engineering often shows fluctuations as acute as any. That is not to say that I am taking lightly the issues which confront civil engineering. I am merely seeking to indicate that there are areas of engineering about which we can be slightly more optimistic than perhaps the general tenor of comments this evening has suggested.
	The absolute numbers of students entering universities to study science, engineering and technology have increased by 8.5 per cent over the past five years despite an overall fall in employment in the engineering sector. So we need to strike a balance about the issues that confront us. That is not to say that we do not need to find ways in which we can strengthen engineering interest and provision.
	As a government, we have made good progress in the sector in developing a vocation-based progression route from the new engineering GCSE, through modern apprenticeships and centres of vocational excellence to foundation degrees and higher education participation. That is to seek to develop an aspect that was dealt with by a number of speakers in the debate—that the vocational deserves a place in equal status with the academic; that the ability of people to do as well as to think intellectually and conceive issues must be in rather better balance than has perhaps been the case in our culture hitherto. That is a challenging dimension, but we have no doubt that education has a part to play in changing that perspective, and we are doing something about it.
	We are also strengthening the links between employers and the education system, widening participation in engineering and science and enhancing our delivery of high level engineering skills. The industry is one of the first for which a vocationally based GCSE has been developed, and it is expected to be the first for which a fully licensed sector skills council will be approved. I say that in response to the comments of my noble friend Lord Howie on that aspect of education.
	As for schools, we believe, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said, that it is important to catch future engineers, scientists and technologists as early as possible in their careers. She may be right that we could do more at junior school level. It is certainly the case that we need to do more with regard to career formation and ambition at secondary school level. We are all aware of the great problem that teachers are expert only in the subjects that they teach and through the experience that they have had. That is a disadvantage in respect of those areas of external work in which teachers are not directly qualified. Engineering suffers from that problem, which is why we are introducing specialist schools alongside the engineering GCSE. We regard that as a major step forward.
	I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, paid tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, for her work with WISE. We recognise the importance of that work and the ambassador's role it plays with regard to schools. We recognise how important it is to have a much better mix of men and women who are competent in the sciences and who can go on to be engineers. That would correct what, historically, has always been an extraordinary—

Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I hope that that will be translated into more money for WISE.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I feared that money might be at the back of the noble Baroness's thoughts somewhere; I cannot make any promises from my humble position here this evening. Nevertheless, the case has been made well and I endorse that.
	I also emphasise the point made by my noble friend Lord Haskel about EMTA's work. It is important to co-operate with employers and to recognise their role in relation to such work. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, emphasised that industry could perhaps play a more proactive part with regard to support in higher education. That is not to underestimate the current links, although more can clearly be done. Against the background of the well-recognised financial constraints in higher education, the support that industry can offer is obviously welcome and we encourage it. We also want to see the development of vocational skills in higher education. The concept behind the foundation degree is that students should be able to engage for two years in degree-level studies that have a strong vocational dimension—which relate to the world of work—and they should subsequently choose whether to go on to a full honours degree in their subject; alternatively, we may have established, through the foundation degree, a higher skill level in terms of vocational skills at a level that enjoys repute and which will be supported.
	We are committed to ensuring an adequate supply of science, engineering and technology graduates with the right skills to meet the economy's needs. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, referred to the Roberts inquiry; Sir Gareth's report in April was of tremendous importance. It acknowledged that overall the UK has a relatively large and growing number of students studying for scientific and technical qualifications. We should recognise that more young people in the UK have science and engineering degrees than in most other OECD countries. Of the G7 nations, only France has more qualified graduates than we do. We responded to Sir Gareth's report as positively as we could.
	With regard to the Government's concern about science and the amount of expenditure that is necessary for it, Investing in Innovation announced the largest sustained growth in science, engineering and technology expenditure for a decade.
	Therefore, this evening I am seeking to recognise the concerns of all those who have an interest in engineering. I appreciate that we are dealing with a difficult subject in educational terms because it is a breadth of disciplines rather than a single one. It is not a subject that is taught directly in schools. Therefore, the joys and opportunities of acquiring the skills and embarking on a career associated with engineering must be communicated more successfully to students. I believe that the House will recognise that an important part of the Government's whole educational perspective is to increase and improve careers advice to young people so that they may be set on the best course as early as possible.
	Against that background, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, will feel that, in promoting the debate this evening, he has brought to the attention of the nation the difficulties facing engineering. At the same time, I hope that he will recognise that the Government are with him entirely in responding to his call for a proactive response to the needs of engineering.

House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before nine o'clock.